During the early decades of the twenty-first century, a stream of robotic missions will be launched to support the exploration of Mars. Miniaturized, lightweight and low-power advanced telecommunications systems are among the needed technologies. Radio transceivers measuring less than 1.5 x 1.5 x 0.3cm and operating at fractions of a Watt, will enable the design of new types of Mars exploration craft ranging from low-cost, networked ground sensors/rovers to airplanes or balloons. The transceivers will communicate collected scientific results to earth by relaying data through Mars orbiters already under development as well as support surface-to-surface links for geographically extended local exploration.

The goal of this project is to develop an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) microtransceiver meeting these objectives. The proposed effort will leverage previous research activities conducted at NASA/JPL, Kansas State University, and academic institutions, as well as recent advancements in Silicon-on-Sapphire IC design and electronic packaging technologies. The final demonstration prototype will bring the development to a technology readiness level of 6, suitable for operation in the Mars temperature and radiation environments.

As pointed out under the Telecommunications and Navigation section of NASA research announcement 03-OSS-01 MT, ?relay communications through infrastructure orbiters ? will play an increasingly important role in terms of significantly augmenting data return for in situ spacecraft and enabling new mission concepts?. The new microtransceiver will provide a general-purpose, low-power communications module that can be used by a wide variety of future in situ spacecraft, offering a cost-effective solution to this need. In addition, low-power IC design technologies developed during the course of the project will be published in the open literature and will be of direct interest to designers of future commercial radio-transceiver products.