Through-Ice Acoustic Communication for Ocean Worlds Exploration

Subsurface exploration of ice-covered planets and moons presents communications challenges, because of the need to communicate through several kilometers of ice. The objective of the task is to develop the capability to wirelessly communicate through ice and thus enable the applicability of untethered ice penetrators in Ocean World missions to transmit data to top surface assets. The critical challenge is architecting a wireless communication link through the ice shell to comple-ment a deployed fiber optic tether, which may be prone to failure due to the dynamic subsurface environments, including tectonic flexing within the ice shell, and the uncertainty of the depth of the ice. One of the proposed solutions currently in development involves employing multiple trans-ceivers (e.g. RF and acoustic wave) with relays through selected sections of ice, re-transmitting the data from transceiver to transceiver. This approach divides the channel into segments, allowing transceivers to optimize the physical layer transmission for their specific and favorable channel segments. In this paper, we present and discuss the preliminary work result of the development of wireless deep-ice communication, focusing on acoustic signal-based communication technology.