Voyager Neptune Telemetry: The Voyager Telemetry System

Abstract

Improvements to the Voyager telemetry system, which have been implemented on the spacecraft and in the Deep Space Network (DSN), will allow a net science data return from Neptune essentially equivalent to that received from Saturn in spite of the increased range. Enhancements to the system performance include: Increased DSN ground station G/T, Inter-agency arraying, Spacecraft data compression, Reed-Solomon concatenated coding, Reduced telemetry link uncertainties. Net improvements totaled 8 dB in a system that was state-of-the-art when Voyager was launched in 1979.