It's interesting to note that although the Voyager probes are sometimes depicted as small (compared to satellites like the Hubble, where images of it next to shuttle astronauts are common place), they're not. The diameter of the main dish, 3.7m, is nearly twice the height of an average adult, and height of the magnometer boom is comparable to that of a 3-storey house.

Even despite this size, the article mentions the current transmission rate, a measly 1.2kbs, despite what is probably the most ideal antenna size & placement feasible, both on Earth and on the probe. Doesn't this suggest there are pragmatic limits to the operational range of 2-way radio transmission throughout the solar system?

I am curious if future such deep-space science missions would be more effective if they instead launched swarms of micro-probes, where the probes arranged themselves radially around a center-point to effect a very large antenna, possibly up to 1km in diameter.

Also, having so many micro-satellite could allow for a substantial degree of redundancy to tolerate more rad damage, and ideally have less of the mission control acrobatics described in this article. (Which is not to discount the scientists' effort in any way, for it is amazing.)