207: Chapter 207 Navigation Particles: No Signal Loss Over Three Million Kilometers!
Countdown to the arrival of the sentry ship, day 84.
Pangu Laboratory, Level B2, Weapon Adaptation Area.
Academician Li Zhengyang placed his thermos on the farthest corner of the testing bench, clearing the entire surface.
The architectural diagram of the ultimate version of the directed-energy weapon array filled three screens, with the topology of the particle beam spatial transmission module occupying three-quarters of the middle one.
He stared at the set of nodes in the topology diagram labeled "Quantum Entanglement Navigation Particle Cluster" for a long time.
"Chief Engineer Su, what is the theoretical value for the entanglement fidelity of the navigation particles given in your technical framework?"
Su Che walked over from the main console and leaned against the edge of the testing bench.
"99.93 percent, at a distance of three million kilometers."
Academician Li Zhengyang rummaged through a drawer to find a notebook that was nearly falling apart, flipped to a certain page, and held it in place with his fingernail.
"When I was working on the primary version of the fire control system, the Quantum Radar's lock-on signal began to decohere beyond two million kilometers. At that time, Academician Qian Zhenhua's radar detection accuracy was sufficient, but the coherence time of the signal itself was not long enough."
"The navigation particles need to be entangled in real-time with the Quantum Radar's lock-on signal. If the signal end decoheres first, the navigation at the front end of the particle beam will be cut off."
"It's equivalent to flying blind."
Su Che did not respond, instead turning to look toward the east side.
"Academician Qian, what is the coherence time of the Quantum Radar lock-on signal on your end?"
Academician Qian Zhenhua was just finishing clearing the patch push queue for the layered networking protocol. Hearing the call, he pulled out a red ballpoint pen, wrote a set of numbers on the draft paper in front of him, and held it up.
"In the current version, at a distance of three million kilometers, the lock-on signal coherence time is 120 microseconds."
Academician Li Zhengyang took the draft paper.
"120 microseconds. From the moment the particle beam is fired until it hits a target three million kilometers away, the flight time is approximately ten seconds. Ten seconds equals ten million microseconds."
"The navigation particles need to continuously receive entanglement calibration signals during the ten million microseconds of flight time. If the signal end decoheres every 120 microseconds, it must perform a handshake again each time."
He closed the notebook.
"Ten million divided by 120 is roughly 83,000 re-handshakes. The channel resources consumed and time delays accumulated by each handshake..."
Academician Li Zhengyang did not finish the calculation.
Su Che had already punched the numbers into the main god ai's simulation module.
The result popped up two seconds later.
The cumulative delay from 83,000 handshakes: 0.7 seconds.
With a 0.7-second calibration gap, on the scale of three million kilometers, the particle beam's pointing drift would return to the centimeter level.
It would be the same as if it hadn't been upgraded.
"The problem is clear." Su Che pushed the simulation results to the large public screen.
Academician Li Zhengyang, Academician Qian Zhenhua, and Academician Sun Qiwen all saw that 0.7 seconds simultaneously.
"It's not a weapon problem; it's a signal end problem." Academician Li Zhengyang tucked his notebook back into his work uniform pocket.
Academician Qian Zhenhua stood up from the east side and walked to the front of the large public screen.
"How much do we need to increase the coherence time from 120 microseconds to avoid frequent handshakes?"
Su Che calculated the variables in reverse within the simulation module.
"If the coherence time is increased to over ten seconds, only one handshake is needed for the entire process. The cumulative delay would drop to the nanosecond level, and the pointing drift would be suppressed to the picometer level."
"Ten seconds?" Academician Qian Zhenhua unscrewed and then screwed his pen cap back on. "It's 120 microseconds now. You want me to increase it to ten seconds? That's a difference of over 80,000 times."
"The Quantum Radar's signal end cannot achieve that."
Su Che nodded.
"Therefore, we won't modify the signal end; we will modify the navigation particle end."
He pulled up the design parameters of the navigation particle cluster on the main screen.
"The navigation particles will not use single entanglement; we will switch to cascaded entanglement. Each navigation particle cluster will internally contain three layers of redundant entanglement pairs. When the first layer decoheres, the second layer takes over; when the second layer decoheres, the third layer provides backup. With the three layers rotating, the equivalent coherence time triples."
"Tripling it is only 360 microseconds." Academician Qian Zhenhua shook his head.
"Three layers are the foundation; there is a second step." Su Che dragged the parameter window to the structural diagram of the particle cluster.
"The navigation particle clusters will not be independent of each other; we will make them into a chain relay. Before the previous cluster decoheres, it passes the calibration information to the next cluster. The front end of the particle beam will not be one cluster of navigation particles, but one hundred clusters arranged in a chain."
"One hundred clusters in a chain relay, 360 microseconds per cluster, the total equivalent coherence time..."
"36,000 microseconds, 36 seconds."
"That's enough."
Academician Qian Zhenhua tightened the pen cap and tucked it back into his pocket.
"I will write the inter-particle information transfer protocol for the chain relay. The initial handshake signal format on the Quantum Radar end needs to be changed; I will release a version today."
Academician Li Zhengyang retrieved his thermos from the corner.
"I will handle the cluster chain arrangement scheme for the particle beam emission end. Fitting one hundred clusters into the emission chamber requires recalculating the spatial layout."
Academician Sun Qiwen poked half his body out from the U-shaped array area.
"Have you calculated the energy consumption for one hundred navigation particle clusters?"
Su Che pushed the energy consumption estimate to him.
Academician Sun Qiwen looked for three seconds, then tapped the side panel of the cabinet with the bottom of his enamel mug.
"The original budget for the ultra-high power energy compression module didn't leave margin for this. I have to recalculate the thermodynamic model, and the flow rate of the cooling pipes needs to be adjusted."
The four of them returned to their respective workstations.
Level B2 was once again filled with the sounds of keyboards and terminal fans.
...
Countdown to the arrival of the sentry ship, day 83.
Early morning.
In the Weapon Adaptation Area, Academician Li Zhengyang created two versions of the spatial layout for the emission chamber for the one hundred navigation particle clusters.
For the first version, the one hundred clusters were arranged linearly; the emission chamber length exceeded the limit and could not fit into the Xuan Nv's belly weapon bay.
For the second version, he changed it to a spiral nested arrangement, which compressed the length by 60%, but the magnetic field interference between adjacent clusters caused the information transfer error rate to rise to 3%.
He posted the error rate data for the second version on the large public screen and said nothing.
Su Che walked over from the main console and took a look.
"Add magnetic shielding layers between adjacent clusters."
"I did," Academician Li Zhengyang opened his notebook. "When the thickness of the shielding layer reaches 0.5 millimeters, the error rate drops below 0.1%, but the overall weight increases by four kilograms."
"Four kilograms. What is the payload margin of a Xuan Nv's weapon bay?"
Academician Zhang Weide poked his head out from behind the Pangu Quantum Computer terminal.
"Eleven kilograms. Four kilograms is manageable."
"It's decided. Use the second version with the shielding layers."
Academician Li Zhengyang closed his notebook and marked the second version plan as the final draft.
Morning.
Academician Qian Zhenhua finished writing the inter-particle information transfer protocol for the chain relay.
At his workstation on the east side, he loaded the protocol into the Quantum Radar's simulation terminal and ran it.
With the one hundred navigation particle clusters in a chain relay, there was 36 seconds of equivalent coherence throughout, with no packet loss in information transfer.
He sent the test report to the public encrypted repository and added a note at the end of the report: "Cosmic ray interference in the actual flight environment needs to be verified by field tests; the maximum noise model has already been added to the simulation environment."
Academician Sun Qiwen in the U-shaped array area revised the thermodynamic model of the ultra-high power energy compression module to the third version.
The additional energy consumption of the one hundred navigation particle clusters was squeezed out by him through optimizing the flow rate of the cooling pipes. It did not increase the total power requirement; it only increased the circulation rate of the coolant by 8%.
He tapped the lid of his enamel mug against the rim twice, then walked over to Su Che with the mug in his hand.
"Power consumption is settled. No extra watts, no extra cooling fins; it was saved from the pipe efficiency."
Su Che integrated the third version of the thermodynamic parameters into the overall energy consumption model and ran a simulation.
Total peak power consumption: 151 kilowatts.
Power supply limit is 160 kilowatts, with a margin of 5.6%.
It's even a bit more generous than before.
"Approved."
Afternoon.
Su Che finished writing the last module of the core code for the Deep Space Main God AI fire control system.
The coupling interface between the fire control bus and the main god ai tactical simulation layer was successfully connected, and the "fire and calculate" logic ran through 300 sets of random shooting scenarios in the simulation environment.
Hit rate.
At a distance of three million kilometers, against a maneuvering target.
98.6%.
An increase of nearly 16 percentage points over the primary version's 83%.
It is even higher than the 97% hit rate of the near-Earth version when hitting a stationary target within 100 kilometers.
Academician Li Zhengyang walked out of the Weapon Adaptation Area, stood in front of the large public screen, and looked at that 98.6%.
He unscrewed his thermos, took a gulp of water that had gone completely cold, and screwed it back on.
He said nothing, turned around, and returned to the Weapon Adaptation Area to continue working on the automatic switching logic for the cross-medium strike mode.
In the corner of the main screen, the countdown to the arrival of the sentry ship.
Eighty-three.
The joint debugging for the global multi-target simultaneous strike is scheduled for tomorrow.
Firing from three directions simultaneously; not a single beam is allowed to go off course.