Order-adaptive frequency trackers for direct-to-Earth Mars communications

During the entry, descent and landing phase (EDL) of the missions to Mars, the spacecraft's high dynamics imprints severe Doppler swings on the signals transmitted via the direct-to-Earth (DTE) channel. In order to recover the data that record the mission status from the received signal, a reliable estimate of the Doppler profile is required. We extend previous work by developing order-adaptive schemes that enforce frequency continuity and improve tracking performance and, as a result, the overall frequency mean-square error as well.