CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Microwave engineers and engineers in general tend to be in their profession because they like technical challenges. Historically, one of the biggest challenges has been how to extend radio communications, especially at microwave frequencies, beyond the horizon. One way to achieve this end at microwaves is to bounce radio signals off the Moon. This form of propagation is known as moonbounce or Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) and is considered the ultimate in long-distance 50-MHz-and-above communications. The Moon is approximately 385,000 km (240,000 mi) from the Earth, and reflecting signals from it allows communication between any two points. Because the Moon is so far away and not a particularly good reflector (about 7% efficient), Communication using it as a passive reflector is not easy and considered by many a challenge. This article will discuss EME in more detail. It will cover some of the history of this form of propagation, technical obstacles to success and their solutions, and who is using the Moon today.

CHAPTER 2 PRIOR WORK

The exploitation of radar during World War II led immediately thereafter to two attempts to reflect radio waves off the moon using an apparatus largely constructed from surplus wartime radar equipment. Z. Bay in Hungary succeeded in detecting echoes, but was obliged integrate many echoes (by applying the receiver output voltages to a set off electrolytic cells which released gas) to establish their presence. DeWitt and Stodola in the United States employed more powerful radar which allowed them to see individual pulse returns on the display. They found consider variation in the amplitudes from pulse to pulse, and on some occasions the echoes were absent altogether, though the radar appeared to be operating properly. These results spurred Grieg et al. to examine the possibility that the moon could be used as a passive reflector in radio relay circuit between continents. Two concern such a scheme. First, the radio system must be capable of overcoming the large loss of intensity in traversing the approximately 384,400 km to the moon and back. Owing to the spherical expansion of the waves from any antenna the flux density falls with the square of the distance R from the source. Thus, in the two-way journey to the moon and back there is a reduction of a factor (1/R2), where v is the scattering cross section of the moon. Even if the moon were a perfect reflector, this loss would be 2.78 x m2or -235.6 dB. In actuality, the moon reflects only about7 percent of any incident meter-length radio waves, so the overall loss is closer to -247 dB. There for a fairly powerful transmitting station is required with a directive antenna capable of beaming the energy toward the moon, and the receiving station must have a similar antenna. Waves shorter than about 5 m are required to reliably penetrate the earth's ionosphere, and at the time Grieg.et.al wrote their paper, transmitters suitable for the kind of service they contemplated could be built at high power only for wavelengths longer than several centimeters. Accordingly, these considerations bounded the region of the radio wave spectrum in which such a relay service might be contemplated .The second issue that Grieg.et.al considered is the way in which the moon might scatter the incident wave. They speculated that some of the fading observed by Dewitt and Stodola may have been caused by the presence of multiple scatters on the lunar surface. These would contribute reflections which were sometimes constructive and at other
2

times destructive. The critical issue was the extent in range of these scatters. When viewed optically from the earth at full moon, the lunar surface is approximately uniformly bright. That is the limbs are about equally bright as the center despite the fact that sunlight is there incident at a grazing angle. Were the moon to scatter radio waves in the same fashion, the echoes would be returned with a spread in delay of 11.6 ms. This would cause any modulation on radio waves with a frequency of greater than about 100 Hz to be destroyed .There the matter was left until further (secret) work was undertaken in the U. S. and my work began at Jodrell Bank in 1954.Progress was made, however, on understanding the nature of the deep echo fading. Kerr and Shain in Australia performed experiments using a shortwave broadcast transmitter and were able to distinguish between a short period fading of the echoes (presumed to be of lunar origin) and slower overall large changes in the strength of the echoes, which they suggested was of terrestrial ionosphere e origin .This was confirmed later at Jodrell Bank by Murray and Hargreaves , who recognized that planepolarized radio waves traversing the ionosphere have their plane of polarization, rotated depending upon the number of electrons lying along the path. This is known as the Faraday Effect. The amount of rotation is doubled on the rectum path. Thus, in the course of the day as the ionosphere builds up or decays, there will be periods when there is 90" difference between the polarization of the waves and the receiving antenna the echoes will then be unobservable.

CHAPTER 3 HISTORY OF EME COMMUNICATION

During World War II, there were reports of possible reflections of radar signals from the Moon. It was not until after the war, in 1946, that the reflection of radio waves off the Moon was documented . A group of U.S. Signal Corps engineers achieved the honor of detecting the first documented radio signals reflected from the Moon as part of a project called Diana. This project was the brain child of John DeWitt, a fellow of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) (predecessor to the IEEE), a radio amateur (N4CBC) and the project leader. The experiment was conducted at 112 MHz, using what we would call today a large phased array and a 3,000 W transmitter built by Edwin Armstrong. At almost the same time, Zoltan Bay, working in Hungary, achieved similar results He used the same frequency range and a similar antenna, but, because of transmit power limitations, he developed an ingenious technique to detect the reflected signals. He sent repeated pulses over an extended period of time (months) and integrated the returned signals. Each time he sent a pulse, he would detect the signal over the expected echo time period and sum/store the voltage received at each point in time .Because he lacked a way to retain voltage over a long time (capacitors were leaky), he applied a technique from chemistry. He used the detected voltage for a hydrolysis of water, converting the water into hydrogen and oxygen gas. After many transmissions, he analyzed the amount of gas produced, which he stored in jars associated with different intervals of time. He found the jars corresponding to 2.5 s after transmission of a pulse, the time for a signal to travel to the Moon and back most amount of gas.

The concept of using the Moon for radio communications actually preceded the Diana experiment. W.J. Bray of the British General Post Office proposed the idea in 1940 . Not long after the success of Project Diana, the military started to employ the Moon for long-distance microwave communications that were free of the vagaries of ionospheric propagation seen at lower frequencies. These applications of moonbounce included a teletype link between the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and the U.S. Navy
4

headquarters in Washington, D.C. Eventually, these links were replaced by active communication satellites. were replaced by active communication satellites. Another group that saw the potential of moonbounce was the radio amateur community. Many radio amateurs are involved in the hobby because they are interested in technical challenges and in extending the limits consistently communicate the farthest at the highest frequency. Moonbounce offered a way to achieve communication over distances not possible by other means. Amateurs were not far behind the professionals. In January 1953, Ross Bateman (W4AO) and Bill Smith (W3GKP) reported reception of EME echoes on 144 MHz but never achieved two-way communication. It was not until 1960 that the first two-wave contacts were made at 1,296 MHz by a group led by Sam Harris (W1FZJ) and amateurs from the EIMAC Radio Club led by Bob Sutherland (W6PO) . Within a year, two-way contacts were completed on the 432 MHz and 144 MHz bands. Sam Harris later became chief engineer of the 305 m (1,000 ft) Arecibo Radio Telescope. By 1973, the use of EME by amateurs had increased to the point that communication at 432 MHz could be completed with all continents by one of the authors, Allen Katz (K2UYH) . Today, EME contacts have been made on all the amateur bands from 28 MHz to 47 GHz with countries all over the Earth .

Fig:3.1 Zoltan Bay integrated the detected voltage over time from many Repeated transmissions
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3.1 PATH LOSS

Radio signals in free space are attenuated as 1/r 2 (inverse distance squared) due to spatial expansion of the radio waves. In moonbounce, this dissolution of signal intensity occurs twice; first, over the quarter million- mile path to the Moon and again on the return trip, for a net 1/r4 path loss. Radio waves hitting the surface of the Moon are partly absorbed and partly scattered by the irregular surface. The EME path loss, L, as a ratio of received power to transmitted power decibels, assuming isotropic antennas at each end, can be expressed as
2 2 16 2

= 10

3.1

where d is the diameter of the Moon, the wavelength, r the distance to the Moon, and factor for lunar reflection efficiency. Using d=3.476 x106 m, r =3.8 x108 m, and = 0.07 gives an L of 251.5 dB at 144 MHz, currently the most popular amateur band for use of EME, and nearly 300 dB for 47 GHz, the highest frequency band where amateurs have achieved EME thus far .These very large values of loss are the main reason why EME is so challenging. The signal level difference between receiving a signal transmitted from the Moon and one reflected from it is enormous. For the example cited, it is almost 130 dB. It is thus much easier to receive a signal transmitted from the Moon. Many radio amateurs monitored the signals transmitted by astronauts during the Apollo missions. The values above are for the average L. The Moons orbit is an ellipse, causing r to vary by about 67% each month with a corresponding variation in L of nearly 2.25 dB . The dependence of L on l2 makes it appear that EME is more difficult at higher frequencies. This conclusion is misleading because the assumption is based on the use of isotropic antennas. Isotropic antennas are fixed in gain. Antenna gain, G, is dependent on area, A, and wavelength as follows:

= 10 4/2

3.2

If one uses transmitting and receiving antennas of a constant area, irrespective of frequency (for example a fixed diameter parabolic dish), the situation is reversed. For a
6

given transmitted power, lunar echoes will be stronger rather than weaker at higher frequencies. This increase in signal level occurs because a constant size receiver antenna collects the same signal power (flux density times area), independent of frequency. On transmit, however, a constant area antenna produces a narrower beam at higher frequencies and hence a higher flux density. Most practical situations fall between these two extremes of frequency dependence. At higher frequency, the ability to maintain an antennas tolerances and pointing accuracy limit the practical size of an antenna, while at lower frequencies, resonant wire antennas can allow antennas to be constructed with more aperture/gain than their apparent physical size. Interestingly, EME communication is currently being achieved by amateurs with a roughly comparable degree of practical difficulty over nearly two decades of frequency, from the 144 MHz to 10 GHz bands, but with very different techniques being used for successful EME at the lower and upper extremes of this wide frequency range.

3.2 SYSTEM CONSIDERATIONS

An EME communication system basically consists of a transmitter, antennas (used for both transmit and receive), and a receiver. The modulation used is also an important factor in of the overall system performance. The signal power received, Pr, is simply the transmitted power, Pt, times the gain of the transmit antenna , Gt ,times L, times the gain of the receive antenna, Gr. Noise is contributed by the receiver and the antenna and ultimately set the limits on the ability to communicate . Noise from the antenna includes contributions from the warm Earth, the atmosphere, the lunar surface, and cosmic sources. It is often convenient to express noise power in terms of an equivalent noise temperature, T. T is related to power, P, by the receiver bandwidth, B in Hz, and Boltzmanns constant, k=1.38x1023 J/K, P=KTB. The system noise temperature, Ts, is Ts = Tr + Ta , where Tr is the receiver noise temperature and Ta is the antenna noise temperature. Tr is related to receiver noise figure, NF in dB by Tr = 290((100.1)-1) , Ta includes noise from all sources in the field of view of the antenna, weighted by the antennas pattern. The lunar

surface has a temperature of around 210 K but has a minimal contribution to Ta since most amateur antennas have beam widths much greater than the Moons angular size.

Fig: 3.2 -2.4 m offset dish used for Russian end of first 47 Ghz EME communication by RW3BP

Antenna sidelobes can be a significant contributor to Ta because their total solid angle can be large, and these sidelobes need to be considered even if they are many decibels down from the main beam. Below 1 GHz, the most important antenna noise source is cosmic noise, primarily from our galaxy. Cosmic noise scales with frequency to a 2.6 power .Assumes a typical amateur EME antenna, one designed for the addition of low Earth noise. At VHF, Ta can increase by as much as ten times in average value depending on the location of the Moon in the sky at different times of the month. For frequencies1 GHz and above, cosmic noise is negligible in most directions and can be virtually ignored.

Fig 3.3 Path loss to moon and back at different frequencies

Fig:3.4. Noise temperature for a typical EME antenna At frequencies greater than about 5 GHz, the Earths atmosphere starts to contribute to Ta, and noise power increases again .Because of the huge path loss, EME signals are normally weak, and achieving a positive signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is of overriding importance. If Pn is the total noise power, SNR can be expressed in dB as:

SNR=PrPn=Pt+Gt+L+Gr-Pn

3.3

Radio amateurs are usually not interested in transmitting large amounts of information; their main goal is establishing communication under very weak signal conditions. EME transmission bandwidth requirements are thus normally small, and a minimum bandwidth is often used, (as little as one hertz, or even less), to maximize the SNR.
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Fig:3.5 (a) Block diagram EME transmitter. (b) Solid state power amplifier (c) 10 and 24 Ghz TWT

3.3 TRACKING THE MOON

For serious EME work youll want a more general way of keeping your antenna pointed at the moon. The Earth and moon complete their mutual orbit every 27.3 days, one sidereal month. The lunar orbit is inclined to the plane of the ecliptic, the Earth-Sun orbital plane, by 5.1. Since the Earths equator is itself inclined at 23.5 to the ecliptic, the moons path through the sky swings north and south of the equator by as much as 28 in a monthly cycle. Predicting the moons exact position is a complicated problem in celestial mechanics, but is readily handled to sufficient accuracy by simple computer software. In general the problem can be reduced to (1) calculating the moons position on the sky, as seen by a hypothetical observer at the centre of the Earth; (2) applying a parallax correction to yield the lunar position at a specified location on the Earths sur face; and (3) converting the astronomical coordinates of right ascension and declination to azimuth and elevation at the specified terrestrial location. Of course, the Earths rotation and moons orbital motion imply that the moons position is constantly changing. Suitable computer software can follow these changes and generate the necessary commands to keep your antenna pointed at the moon. Several free or inexpensive software packages with moon-tracking features are listed in the sidebar, and such facilities are built into the programs WSJT and MAP65 widely used for digital EME. For good results we should aim for pointing accuracies of about 1/4 of your half-power beam-width, or better.
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3.4 SYSTEM COMPONENTS

The focus of transmitters used for EME is on the power amplifier. Generally, the highest power is desired to maximize the SNR. This power level is limited by regulations, available technology, and economics. The maximum output power in the United States is 1.5 kW, but many stations run lower power. At frequencies below 2 GHz, gridded vacuum tube power amplifiers still dominate, but are rapidly being replaced by solid-state power amplifiers (SSPAs), particularly at lower power levels (less than 100 W). A block diagram of a typical VHF amateur transmitter is shown above. At frequencies above 2 GHz, travelling wave tube amplifiers (TWTAs) dominate but are also being rapidly replaced by SSPAs. The transition to SSPAs is the principal advance in transmitter technology since the early period of EME when a 3-kW transmitter was used for the first echoes. Examples of an SSPA and TWTAs are also shown above.

The biggest technological impact on moonbounce has been to the receiver. The critical part of the receiver is the first amplifier stage that connects to the antenna. It is this stage that often is the major contributor to the noise power in the SNR. Because of the very high EME path loss and the low noise contributed by the antenna, the noise added by the receiver must be as small as possible. Advances in device technology have reduced the noise added by the receiver by more than an order of magnitude since the early days of amateur EME. A parametric amplifier (par amp) with a noise figure of more than a decibel was used for the first 1,296 MHz EME contact. Sam Harris (W1FZJ) on the eastern end was among the early parametric amplifier innovators. The introduction of Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) field effect transistors (FETs) in the 1970s was a major breakthrough for EME enthusiasts, and has made the GaAs low-noise preamplifier.

Low Noise Amplifier is an integral part of virtually all amateur EME stations. Amateurs have become adept at producing LNAs that rival the best professionally produced amplifiers. They have also pioneered techniques for measuring LNA performance using cosmic noise as a reference that produce superior accuracy than commercially available noise figure meters . At1,296 MHz, LNAs with a Tr under 10 K have been reported and, even at 78 GHz, low noise receivers have been produced by amateurs for
11

EME. Any feed line between an antenna and a receiver introduces attenuation and noise. Consequently, LNAs for EME are normally mounted as close to the antenna terminals as feasible to achieve the lowest possible noise figure. At ambient temperature, every 0.1 dB of loss in front of the LNA adds about 7 K to Ts. At microwave frequencies where antenna temperatures are much lower than ambient, this change can correspond to a receiver degradation of more than 0.5 dB. LNA gain must be sufficient to overcome subsequent feedline losses and dominate the noise contributed by subsequent stages. Current practices usually employ one or two low-noise GaAs devices in a preamplifier with a simple noise impedance matching circuit to minimize losses. (Only if severe out-of-band interference is present will a filter be used in front of the LNA because of the resulting loss.) Since the same antenna is generally used for both transmit and receive, the LNA must be switched out of the line when transmitting, and thus the transmit/receive relay used must also be selected for minimum loss.

Fig 3.6: When antenna noise is low ,as is usual when pointing to space , reducing receiver noise yields more DBs than the corresponding reduction in noise figure

Many amateurs consider the antenna the most important component of an EME station and devote a large share of their effort on it. There are essentially only two types of antennas used by amateurs for EME today: the yagi and the parabolic dish, although there are many variants of these basic antennas. Yagis, either singularly (usually very long in wavelengths) or in arrays, are used almost exclusively in VHF bands. Both linear and loop element yagis are used. At higher frequencies, parabolic dishes dominate and are used
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almost exclusively above 2 GHz. Both full and offset dishes are used, with offset designs more common at frequencies above 5 GHz. Fig 3.7 shows a 15-m dish used for EME by HB9Q in Switzerland. Considerable effort by many individuals has been applied to the design of high-gain yagis with special attention paid to achieving minimal sidelobes to keep Ta low. This effort has been made possible by the availability of accurate antenna modelling software. The gain of a modern, well designed yagi of length l can be approximated by the equation

= 8.1 1/ + 11.4 dBi

3.4

Yagis are light, relatively easy to build, and have low wind resistance. Long yagis designed for EME are generally narrowband antennas with bandwidth traded for gain and better sidelobe performance. Yagis can be combined in phased arrays to yield nearly 3 dB for each doubling of the number of elements. Large arrays of eight, 16, or even more yagis are not uncommon. The gain of a parabolic dish of diameter d with a feed yielding 55% efficiency is

= 20 / + 7.3

3.5

Fig:3.7 15-m dish used by HB9Q for EME at 432 and 1296Mhz.
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The gain of many of the dishes used for EME is probably somewhat higher than given by as considerable time has also been spent modelling feed designs for optimum efficiency. A popular method of constructing dishes by amateurs is to make use of the natural tendency of materials to form an approximate parabolic shape. Fig. 3.7 shows a parabolic dish constructed by one of the authors using this stress technique. Many amateur dish antennas use multiple ring scalar feeds to achieve efficiencies nearer to 70% . Dish antennas offer the advantage of being usable on multiple frequency bands by simply changing their feed antenna or using a multiband feed. Fig 3.9 shows a scalar horn feed used for 1,296 MHz EME. A linear polarized antenna is usually thought of as being either horizontal or vertical. When dealing with the spherical Earth, these concepts have meaning only locally. As seen from the Moon, horizontal antennas on different continents will have very different orientations. In addition, when a linearly polarized wave passes through the Earths atmosphere, its plane of polarization is rotated in proportion to the local free electron density, the Earths magnetic field intensity, and the square of wavelength. This phenomenon is known as Faraday rotation. Faraday rotation is greatest during the daytime for stations well away from the equator and at low (VHF) frequencies. A mismatch in angle, A between an incoming waves polarization and the receiving antenna will attenuate the received signal power by cos2(A). Polarization losses increase to 3 dB when the misalignment is 45 degree and increase rapidly at high angles up to 90 degree Because of the 2 dependence, Faraday rotation is only important for EME operation below 1 GHz, and is insignificant at higher frequencies. Faraday rotation in the daytime ionosphere can be as much as a full turn at 432 MHz and many turns at 144 MHz. At 432 MHz, the rotation may be essentially constant over several hours or more; at lower frequencies, significant changes can occur in 30 min. Variations are especially noticeable near sunrise or sunset, when ionization levels are changing rapidly, as illustrated below

Fig:3.8. Signal loss in DB as result of polarization mis-alignment and sun affect rate of change of Faraday rotation
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Fig : 3.9. Typical scalar horn feed for EME at the microwave frequencies with parabolic dishes

3.5 SYSTEM EVALUATION

Careful measurements of your EME systems performance can help to determine where station improvements can be made. Transmitter performance is essentially determined by power output, feedline losses, and antenna gain. The first two can be measured in standard ways, but antenna gain is much more difficult. The most useful figure of merit for receiving performance is G/T , and while absolute measurements of either G or
s

T separately are difficult, you can measure their ratio with useful accuracy and compare it
s

with expectations. One technique particularly useful at 432 MHz and above is to use the sun as a broadband noise source. Point your antenna at cold sky and then at the sun, and measure Y, the ratio of received noise power in the two directions. Operate your receiver at maximum bandwidth with the AGC off, and if possible make the observations with the sun at elevation 30 or higher.

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To calculate G/T from Y, you will need a contemporaneous estimate of solar flux
s

density at your operating frequency. Daily measurements of solar flux are obtained at a number of standard frequencies and made available online (see sidebar); you can interpolate an approximate flux value for the amateur band in question. Solar flux densities vary with sunspot activity, and day-to-day or even hour-to-hour variations are especially large at lower frequencies and near solar maximum.

Fig 3.10 sunspot cycle over different years

Representative monthly median values for six frequencies are presented in Fig 3.10 over sunspot cycle 23. As a starting point, you can estimate a value of solar flux for your
*

band and a similar point in the sunspot cycle directly from Fig 3.10 Then, if S is the solar
-2 -1

flux density in units of W m Hz and Y is expressed as a dimensionless ratio, the corresponding value of G/T in dB is given by
s

= 10

8 (1) 2
22 -2 -1

3.6
W m Hz ), and with S
16

Solar fluxes are usually quoted in Solar Flux Units (1 SFU = 10 in those units Equation (12) can be reduced to the simpler relation

= 10log

3.47(1) 2

3.7

Of course, receiving your own echoes from the moon provides the best guarantee that your equipment is capable of EME communication with comparable stations. Transmitting a few dashes, then standing by to hear your lunar echo some 2.5 s later, brings a thrill that most hams never forget. With suitable signal-processing software, echoes can be detected and measured even with relatively low-power equipment. Version 4.9.8 of the WSJT program includes an automated echo-testing facility that is useful for quantitative measurements even if your echoes are many dB below the audible threshold.

3.6 CODING AND MODULATION

International Morse code with on-off keying (OOK) is an excellent general purpose communication mode. It is easy to implement and performs well in weak-signal conditions. EME operating procedures for CW usually include multiple repetitions so that essential parts of a bare-minimum QSO can be assembled from fragments copied on signal peaks. However, modern communication theory points the way toward modulation schemes significantly more efficient than OOK, codes better than Morse, and error-control methods more effective than simple repetition. Amateur experiments with these ideas have led to the current popularity of digital EME on the VHF and lower UHF bands. In general, an efficient digital mode designed for basic communication with weak signals will compress user messages into a compact form and then add multi-fold redundancy in the form of a mathematically defined error-correcting code (ECC). Such codes can ensure that full messages are recoverable with high confidence, even when many transmitted symbols have been lost or corrupted.

A number of distinct sources may contribute to the improved performance of such a mode over CW. Multi-tone FSK (M-FSK) is a more efficient modulation than OOK, in part because each received symbol is roughly the equivalent of a full character, rather than a single dot or dash. For equivalent messages, M-FSK can therefore be keyed much more slowly than CW and detected in a much smaller bandwidth. Morse code is selfsynchronizing at the character level (if a signal is strong enough for letters to be recognized), but a Morse transmission contains no useful information for synchronizing a
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whole message. This fact makes it difficult to piece together copied fragments of a CW message being sent repeatedly. In contrast, a synchronized digital transmission with ECC can encode the complete message into a new data format designed to enhance the probability that successful decoding will produce the messages full information content, with everything in its proper place. For the limited purpose of exchanging callsigns, signal reports, and modest amounts of additional information, digital EME contacts can be made at signal levels some 10 dB below those required for CW, while at the same time improving reliability and maintaining comparable or better rates of information throughput.

3.7 FARADAY ROTATION

Even in the absence of any Faraday rotation, an EME signal transmitted with a horizontal antenna will have its linear polarization misaligned at a receive site by an angle s known as the spatial polarization offset. The return signal will be offset in the opposite direction,-s. The Faraday rotation angle f, on the other hand, will have the same sign for signals travelling in both directions. The net polarization shift is f +s, while the shift in the reverse direction is f -s. A consequence of this difference is nonreciprocal, one-way propagation, in which the polarization may align in one direction but be totally out of phase in the other direction. Because of this problem, many moonbounce stations have the ability to change the polarization of their antennas. One solution is to mount two sets of yagi elements at right angles on the same boom. Other stations rotate the whole antenna to correct for polarization alignment errors. For dish type antennas, it is relatively easy to rotate feed antennas or use a feed horn with cross-polarized elements. Another solution is to use circular polarization. Dishes lend themselves to circular polarization by the addition of a circular polarized feed.

However, when operating EME, a station must transmit on one sense circular polarization and receive on the opposite sense, since the sense of a circularly polarized wave is reversed when it is reflected. A station transmitting with right-hand circular polarization must receive with left-hand circular in order to receive its own echoes, and those of other stations transmitting right-hand circular. The transmission of one circular sense and reception of the other is not difficult as many circular feeds operate in exactly this way. The transmission of right-hand circular and reception on left hand circular polarization has become the standard for EME on most of the microwave bands. A clean pattern with good suppression of sidelobes and rear lobes is important for all EME
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antennas, but especially at microwave frequencies where excessive noise pickup through sidelobes can significantly increase Ts. Modern, computer-aided design programs have been used to optimize G/Ts, the ratio of forward gain to system noise temperature. For parabolic dishes, G/Ts can be optimized by using a feed with a somewhat larger taper in illumination at the edge of the dish than would yield the highest forward gain.

Fig : 3.11. When Faraday rotation is 45 degree ,alignment of polarization will receive will cause cancelation on transmit

3.8 DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING AND SIGNAL DETECTION

Another possible way to extend communications in weak-signal scenarios like moonbounce is to use a more efficient modulation scheme that allows a narrower bandwidth than possible w ith ones ears. For many years, amateurs have been experimenting with digital signal processing (DSP) to allow the reception of weaker signals than can be copied by ear. However, these attempts were not very successful until relatively recently. Part of the problem is that our ears are very good at what they do. Another factor is the nature of the weak-signal propagation, which does not simply add noise to the signal, but actually multiplies the signal by the noise and spreads the frequency limiting the effective minimum bandwidth and the related signal enhancement. Signal frequency spreading and related fading are especially a problem for EME. The Moons rotation and orbital motion are synchronized causing the same side of the Moon to always point toward the Earth. Since its orbit is elliptical, its orbital speed varies, but as its rotation rate is constant, on Earth, an apparent slow rocking of the Moon is seen. This effect is call lunar libration and results in a Doppler-related frequency spreading that increases the effective minimum bandwidth from about 0.2 Hz at 144 MHz to more than 30 Hz at 10 GHz. (The
19

spreading is not quite linear with frequency because a larger portion of the lunar surface contributes to echo power at higher frequencies). The relative motion of the Moon and the Earth also causes the signal frequency to be shifted by the Doppler effect. This shift is proportional to frequency. A Moon echos Doppler frequency shift is maximum and positive at moonrise, falls to zero as the Moon crosses zenith, and is a maximum negative at moonset. For two stations at different locations, the mutual Doppler shift is the sum of the individual (oneway echo) shifts. Maximum shifts are around 440 Hz at 144 MHz, 4 kHz at 1,296 MHz and 30 kHz at 10 GHz. Different reflection points on the lunar surface produce different Doppler shifts that add to the spreading and increase the effective minimum bandwidth. When narrow bandwidths are used to improve signal detection, the receive frequency must be corrected for the Doppler shift, which complicates any DSP. The fading associated with frequency spreading also degrades the reception of CW signals. Signal amplitudes remain nearly constant over a coherence time given by the reciprocal of the frequency spreading. Typical coherence times range from several seconds at 144 MHz to about 20 ms at 10 GHz The related libration fading, is most rapid when the Moon is near zenith and lowest at moonrise and moonset. The fading in the UHF frequency range (432 and 1,296 MHz bands) tends to be at a rate that can adversely impact CW copy, converting dashes into dots and severely degrading reception. Libration fading varies in a complex way with the Moons orbit. It is possible using a computer to search for times with preferred libration rates at a given frequency band to improve CW copy.

Fig: 3.12. Liberation fading can make EME signals copy difficult .Its rate varies with frequency and the position of moon is as illustrated above.

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The success of the new digital modulation formats DSP techniques that have become popular in recent years is based on eliminating the need to accurately know and maintain a stations frequency. In the past, it was essential to very accurately know the frequency to find and decode a weak signal utilizing effective minimum bandwidths that could be a few hertz or less; a technical requirement not easily accomplished by many radio amateurs. The digital modulation most widely used for EME is JT650. This mode was conceived by Joe Taylor (K1JT), a Nobel Prize winning physicist. It employs a synchronizing (sync) signal with a quasi-random amplitude pattern to provide both frequency and timing information.

About half of the transmission power is used in the sync, but this power investment is well worth the convenience provided. To overcome the effect of libration, it uses error-correcting coding, and other diversity techniques to substantially improve the reliability of EME signal copy. It digitizes messages with a modified Reed-Solomon errorcorrecting code to enable detection even when many symbols have been lost in transmission. JT65 is based on multi-frequency shift keying (MFSK), and uses 65 equally spaced (65-FSK) computer- generated audio tones to modulate a single sideband (SSB) transmitter. The results show that EME communication can be regularly achieved at signal levels 610 dB below those normally required with CW. This improved performance is due in part to JT65s narrower detection bandwidth that is closer to the effective minimum bandwidth than CW bandwidths. (Different versions of JT65 have been developed to allow its bandwidth to be matched to the frequency spreading on different EME frequency bands). MFSK is more information efficient than CW (International Morse code) because each received symbol is roughly the equivalent of a full character, rather than individual dots or dashes. Consequently, JT65 can be sent more slowly than CW and be detected in a smaller bandwidth (5 Hz for the JT65B mode used on 144 MHz versus about 50 Hz for CW). CW is self-synchronizing at the character level (if strong enough for letters to be recognized), but provides no means for synchronizing a whole message, which makes piecing together fragments of a repeat ed CW message difficult. JT65s Reed-Solomon block coding enables a full message to be decoded with no errors with high likelihood even when less than a quarter of the symbols have been correctly copied

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CHAPTER 4 THE JODRELL BANK EXPERIMENTS

Radar reflections from the moon were successfully obtained at Jodrcll Bank by Murray and Hargreaves using a radar they constructed which operated at !20 MHz at a power of about 3 kW for pulse lengths of 30 ms. The antenna was an array of dipoles that could be phased to alter the elevation of the beam. The array consisted of 10 elements, each of which comprised a reflecting screen tilted back at 45" and placed in line behind the previous one. Each screen was one wavelength wide and four wavelengths long and was illuminated by two rows of full-wave dipoles. The physical aperture was 250 m2,and the overall efficiency was between 60 and 70 percent. The antenna allowed the moon to be seen at transit (i.e due south) for about an hour each day for about 2 week search month (when the moon is highest).The echoes obtained with this equipment were photographed from an A-scope display.

Measurements of the correlation between the echoes (through the calculation of the noise corrected autocorrelation coefficient) gave values in the range 0.2 and 0.4, indicating a fading period of the order of l s or less. The amplitude distribution was found to match the Rayleigh law, indicating that a large number of scatters contributed to the returns (i.e., the lunar surface did not offer one dominant reflecting region).The correlation between the echoes exhibited small nights to- night variations, which appeared to depend upon the apparent spin rate (called libration) of the moon as seen from earth. Fig 4.4 illustrates the causes of this. Diumallibration (having a value at transit of approximately 12xcos(9 x L) rad/s, where L is the latitude of the terrestrial observer) is the largest of these, but at different time sin the lunar month, the libration in longitude (having a maximum value of 4 x rad/s) can add or subtract.

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Fig:4.1 The antenna system employed at jodrell bank during 1953-57 to study the moon at 120 Mhz

This apparent spin of the moon can be thought of as giving rise to a Doppler broadening of the echoes. A strip of the lunar surface along the apparent instantaneous spin axis reflects signals without imparting any Doppler shift but strips on the approaching hemisphere are Doppler-shifted to higher frequency, while the reverse is true for the receding hemisphere. The maximum Doppler shift fo for reflection from the limbs in the Jodrell Bank experiments was given by 1.4 x LT Hz, where LT is the libration rate, and is on the order of +_ 2 Hz. Now a day ,one could measure this Doppler broadening by performing a phase-coherent analysis of the returns in a digital computer, but in 1955 we had no digital computer and had to approach the problem by measuring the echo autocorrelation function-recognizing that this is the Fourier transform of the echo power spectrum..To explore the correlation of the echoes over interval s shorter than the normal 1.8-s repetition interval, the radar was modified to transmit pairs of 20-ms pulses at intervals of 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 1, 1-1/4, and 1-1/2 s every 3s. Fig 4.3 shows the autocorrelation function measured using these pulse-pairs plotted against the product of the maximum Doppler shift fo and the pulse separation t. A sensible single curve is obtained showing that the fading varies with the libration rate LT and is therefore of lunar origin.

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Fig:4.2 Examples of echos from moon observed at jodrell bank .pulses were sent at interval of 1.8 s , The overall level difference in upper and lower panal is caused by Faraday effect

Fig :4.3 .Plot of no of echos having amplitude greater or less than mean z,showing its distribution in Rayleigh law
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Fig :4.4 Causes of lunar libration: a) Libration in longitudes caused by the elliptical orbit of the moon, which prevents, the moon from presenting exactly the same face to the earth, b) libration in latitude caused by the tilt of the lunar spin axis with respect to the plane of its orbit, and c) diurnal libration caused by the motion of a terrestrial observer

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Fig :4.5 Doppler broadening of lunar reflections caused by instantaneous apparent spin. Strips on the lunar disk parallel to the spin axis contribute the same Doppler shift

Fig 4.1 shows the resulting power spectrum for the echoes obtained by fitting a Gaussian function to the observed autocorrelation function and expected Doppler spectra were the moon to scatter uniformly brightly. It is evident that the bulk of the retus are from a region of the lunar disk having a diameter of the order of one-fifth that of the moon. Evidently, the regions most nearly normal to the ray path most of the echo; hence, it can be concluded that on the scale of the wavelength employed (2.5 m), the moon appears relatively "smooth. Subsequent, more precise experiments and improved theory permitted the mean surface slope to be determined from radar reflection studies.

Fig : 4.6 Correlation between echos

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For intervals of the order of 10 times the wavelength X ,this is about 5" for A = 2.5 m . To confirm the conclusion that most of the echo was from the center of the lunar disk, experiments were performed with pulses only 2 ms in length (i.e., shorter than the 11.6-ms range depth of the moon). The echoes showed no measurable range delay broadening when contrasted with photographs of the same transmitter pulses leaked into the receiver

Fig :4.7 The Doppler broadening of lunar echos

The results described herein were presented at an international conference (URSI General Assembly, Boulder ,Colorado) in 1957, and provoked the release of then classified results obtained by the U.S. Navy . In this work ,a very powerful (1 -MW) radar operating at 198 MHz was employed, together with a large parabolic reflector. Employing pulses of only 1 pin length, Trexler reached the same conclusion as I did, namely, that t e bulk of the observable ret m was from the centre of the lunar disk and had a limited range extent of the order of 100-200 p. The implications of this were that amplitude-modulated radio waves reflected by the moo not be so distorted that all of the intelligence would be removed.

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CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION
Aside from scientific studies, radio amateurs are the only group presently regularly utilizing EME for communications. As a result of improvements in technology. Spectral display of a typical JT65 EME signal. The synchronizing signal is the relatively constant vertical line. The dots are individual tones that carry the message information. In the top right, the position of the Moon, Doppler shift, and relative path loss is shown., moonbounce has become the most popular propagation for weak signal communication at frequencies above 50 MHz. At the time of this writing, use of EME is highest in the 144 MHz band, where JT65 is by far the preferred modulation. Just about anytime the Moon is above the horizon in Europe and North America, JT65 EME signals can be detected in the frequency range between 144.100 and 144.160 MHz. Several hundreds of stations worldwide regularly operate with moonbounce using JT65 on 144 MHz. The next two most popular EME bands are 432MHz and 1,296 MHz. In both these bands there is still significant use of CW and even SSB (voice) modulation for EME communications because of the higher SNRs that can be achieved with moderate sized antennas. Use of digital modulation techniques is growing in these frequency bands as new radio amateurs in many countries are no longer required to know CW. A hundred or more stations are typically active on these bands during regularly scheduled international EME competitions, and in other major operating events. The higher microwave bands, 2.3 GHz and above, have at least several dozen stations that regularly operate EME. Most of the amateurs involved in EME do it for the technical challenge. The thrill of building a system with which one can send a signal into space and detect signals returning from the Moon is very real. Many of the amateurs involved in EME are also interested in extending the state of the art of radio communications. Improving antenna and receiver performance has always been a major component of EME, now DSP and the search for improved algorithms for the reception of weak signals from the Moon is also a part of it. The effort to extend the highest EME frequency, presently to 78 GHz goes onand the quest continues.

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REFERENCES
[1.] N.Murarka and E.Shearman, Characterist ics of the moon-reflected signals at X band, IEEE Trans.Commun., vol. 23,no. 11,pp 1347-1351,1975. [2.] M.Franko, Computer optimized dual mode circularly polarized feedhorn, in Proc.2008 E.M.E Conf.,Florence,Italy. [3.] Z.Bay,Reflection of microwaves from the moon, Hungarica Acta Phys., vol. 1, no. 1,pp.1-22,Apr.1946 [4.] H. Dewitt, Jr. and E. K. Stodola, "Detection of radio signals reflected from the moon," Proc. IRE, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 229-242, 1949. [5.] http://www.wikipedia.com : Wikipedia [6.] .Zhutyaev. 1296 MHz small EME station with good capability LNA optimization Available:http://www.vhfdx.ru/apparatura/rw3bp_1296mhz_lna_optimization, Mar. 2011

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