Radio Communication with Hypersonic Aerial Vehicle

Vehicles flying at hypersonic velocities within the atmosphere become enveloped in a “plasma sheath” that prevents radio communication, telemetry, and most importantly, GPS signal reception for navigation. This radio “blackout” period has been a problem for many decades. An appropriate mitigation method must allow for spacecraft to ground control and ground control to spacecraft communications through the reentry plasma sheath. Our solution is to reduce the electron density by applying magnetic and electric fields to the plasma using specially designed electrodes to reduce the electron number density in the plasma sheath which, in turn, reduces the plasma frequency sufficiently to allow transmission window of radio waves between 1.1 and 5.6 GHz.