Compressive sensing spectrum analysis for space autonomous radio receivers

In space mission there are different scenarios where autonomous radio systems are very useful. In this paper we consider one of such scenarios, related to the communication infrastructure for the planet exploration (where different rovers communicate with an orbiter). One of the most critical functions to implement in autonomous radio is the reconstruction of the electromagnetic scenario, detecting the radio emission of the rovers (with the estimate of the frequency of the carrier, the power level and so on) present on the planet surface. In these deep space missions, it is often necessary to analyze a very large bandwidth signal (often more than 1 GHz) where only few small portions of the spectrum are used by narrow-band transmissions. This spectrum characteristic requires the use of high-resolution spectrum analysis, typically performed using FFT based algorithms. Even if this large bandwidth analysis is possible with actual (terrestrial) ADC technology, the space qualification and the constraints on the power consumption make this ADCs unsuitable for space applications. This paper shows as the new paradigm of Compressive Sensing -or Compressive Sampling- (CS) can be exploited to reduce the performance requirements of the ADC used for the spectrum analysis in autonomous radio.