Phase II Final Report - NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts

Planetary Exploration Using Biomimetics
An Entomopter for Flight on Mars
In the event that the Entomopter must communicate to the rover or other Entomopters, we
assume that the obstacle detection subsystem can be used for simultaneous communications and
obstacle detection. For the communication link calculations, initially T was fixed at 1 ms to correspond
to the assumed interpulse spacing for obstacle detection. This corresponds to a data rate
of one kbits/s. With the assumptions listed in Table 4-3, the peak and average powers were calculated
and are plotted versus range at 18 GHz in Figure 4-21. The peak average powers at a
200-m range are 39.5 mW and 132 nW, respectively. The peak average powers at a 1000-m
range are 986.6 mW and 3.3 µW, respectively. The peak and average powers at 200-m and 1000-
m are plotted versus frequency in Figures 4-22 and 4-23, respectively, showing an increase in
power with increased frequency for the current assumptions.
Power (W)
Peak and average powers at 18 GHz
1
0.1
0.01
1.10 3
1.10 4
1.10 5
1.10 6
1.10 7
1.10 8
1.10 9
1.10 10
0 200 400 600 800 1000
Peak
Average
Range (m)
Figure 4-21: Peak and Average Transmitter Power Required for Communications at
18 GHz as a Function of Range
Peak power (W)
1 . 10 4
1 . 10 5
1 . 10 6
100
10
1
0.1
0.01
1 . 10 3
0 20 40 60 80 100
f (GHz)
range = 200 m
range = 1000 m
Peak power at 200 and 1000 m
Figure 4-22: Peak Transmitter Power Required for Communications at 200 m and 1,000 m
as a Function of Frequency
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Phase II Final Report