GMSK/PN for high rate telemetry and high accuracy ranging of Lagrange and Mars missions

This paper presents a new method to transmit simultaneously high rate telemetry and PN ranging. The scheme is very bandwidth efficient and has only a small degradation with respect to a telemetry only transmission. It can be used instead of conventional residual carrier modulations thereby realizing significant gains in data volumes, while maintaining or improving the ranging measurement accuracy. Two examples of the link budget for typical missions to Lagrange points and Mars are shown to illustrate obtainable performances.