paper

Design for minimum energy in starship and interstellar communication

arXiv:1402.1215 · doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2014.11.007

Abstract

Microwave digital communication at interstellar distances applies to starship and extraterrestrial civilization (SETI and METI) communication. Large distances demand large transmitted power and/or large antennas, while the propagation is transparent over a wide bandwidth. Recognizing a fundamental tradeoff, reduced energy delivered to the receiver at the expense of wide bandwidth (the opposite of terrestrial objectives) is advantageous. Wide bandwidth also results in simpler design and implementation, allowing circumvention of dispersion and scattering arising in the interstellar medium and motion effects and obviating any related processing. The minimum energy delivered to the receiver per bit of information is determined by cosmic microwave background alone. By mapping a single bit onto a carrier burst, the Morse code invented for the telegraph in 1836 comes closer to this minimum energy than approaches used in modern terrestrial radio. Rather than the terrestrial approach of adding phases and amplitudes to increases information capacity while minimizing bandwidth, adding multiple time-frequency locations for carrier bursts increases capacity while minimizing energy per information bit. The resulting location code is extremely simple and yet can approach the minimum energy as bandwidth is expanded. It is consistent with easy discovery, since carrier bursts are energetic and straightforward modifications to post-detection pattern recognition can identify burst patterns. The interstellar coherence hole captures the time and frequency coherence constraints, and observations of the environment by transmitter and receiver constrain the burst parameters and limit the search scope.

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