We started off by deploying our 1 Gbps optical switched communications network throughout the HMP Research Station (our camp), fixing damage to fiber cable caused by animals roaming Devon Island over winter. After that, we bought up our Ka-band dish, which we operate as a collaboration between Telesat, SFU, CSA, and the Communications Research Centre (CRC). The Ka-band dish provides high-speed incoming data (several times faster than the average network connection at home) and a reasonable outgoing data throughput (a few times faster than a connection at home). It acts to provide "general" user networking - web and e-mail for the large number of participants here.

However, for analog mission-class spaceflight, and other critical, work, we need something a little more special. That's our C-band dish, with which we can test and use state of the art modulation and other satellite techniques, combined with spaceflight-related Internet protocols to achieve high-fidelity spaceflight-like communications. One important point is to maximize our ability to transmit data at high speed. Most consumer-type network connections, including our (still state of the art and very cool) Ka-band dish, have a focus on getting a high rate of incoming data, with a slower rate, and quality of service, of outgoing data. That's great for accessing the Internet. However, emergency and spaceflight comms have the exact opposite need! We go to another planet because we want to find out things. Most of the data flows back from the remote location, and not to it! Same goes for emergencies and telemedicine needs. We also need the network to have an extremely high quality of service - it must be super clean and well-behaved. C-band lets us do this, in increasingly innovative ways. This year, we'll deploy a new technology, enabled by the latest digital signal processing (DSP) techniques that lets us double our outgoing data flow, and possibly go further by improving our choices in how we transmit. This may open up the way for future remote deployments where we will transmit data at rates of sixty or more times faster than usual home network connections allow.

Why is this important? Well - NASA presently plans to operate networks for lunar missions with speeds in the 100-300 Mbps range. Many of the lessons for how to do this have been learned and demonstrated here at HMP, in particular how to move large amounts of data around at large range from the Base facility. This is very hard to achieve, for reasonable costs, at very remote sites via satellite communications, especially in Northern Canada. This greatly influences, and potentially restricts, how these sites can be used for analog mission-class work. The further North you go, the worse the problem, and the more expensive it gets to make a solution work. The higher we can get the outgoing data rate, the more we can use these sites for analog mission-class work that is compatible with NASA and other space agency requirements. We can also enhance capabilities at any analog site in the world by deploying ExSOC's extended capabilities. This year, we should reach the point where we can transmit extremely high-quality video in real time, bringing us closer to the multiple HD-quality video streams we need for a real analog mission deployment. All this is possible with our collaboration with CRC, where CRC acts as the "DSN" site for HMP, and SFU builds the lunar/planetary surface exploration solutions, with funding from a wide range of sources.

Now in our 11th year of SFU TRL advanced ICT at HMP, we have reached another milestone - we have phased out the last analog (as in not digital) communications system at HMP! All systems are now fully digital, including our long-range safety/voice communication network, allowing us to support traverses and EVA work out to 60km from base camp. This is integrated into our ICT infrastructure, including our long-range, tens of kms at tens of Mbps, and often out of line of sight, data comms system - PlanetNet, which moves into Version 4 this year. Presently, PlanetNet is feeding base camp the multiple data networks we use from our two dishes, but it will also be supporting remote field teams in the weeks to come, allowing end to end mission operations, including fully emulated lunar, Mars, and beyond delays in communications. We can easily move voice through the primary data network, and back to base, using emergency service/defense/security-grade interoperability solutions from TRL's great friends at Raytheon-JPS. This all works with our correspondingly emergency/defense/security-grade hand-held and vehicle-carried voice radio systems. We try to use the latest commercial solutions, to bring stable, affordable, but best of breed solutions to human spaceflight.

We're looking forward to an exciting rest of season! Keep watching for more cool news from the bleeding edge of analog Exploration Systems research and support.