Open Source Modular Wideband Ground Station Design Principles for Small Satellite Operations
- Paper number
IAC-17,B6,1,9,x40907
- Year
2017
- Abstract
For non-commercial satellite missions (e.g. CubeSats), global ground station coverage is still a challenge. Usually only one headquarter is available and more stations in the ground segment imply either complex arrangements with other groups or high rental costs. Many projects would benefit from a distributed receiver network, as services often are restricted by the downlink availability. Several attempts for distributed ground station networks, most of them targeting amateur radio or academic projects, have been made in the last two decades. Unfortunately, they were not widely adopted by the community and the challenge of a versatile modular system still exists. In this paper the preliminary design of an open-source ground station is presented. The design is modular and has a price tag in the 14k EUR range, with all options included. The purpose is to give a guideline to set up a distributed network node, allowing for flexibility in the used components to accommodate various implementations. The reference ground station supports up- and downlink covering 1 to 10 GHz using a cross-polarised dish feed. A dual channel software defined radio is used as the central transceiver, allowing for a wide range of applications to be programmed on the fly. Hence, different polarisation schemes can be adapted dynamically, allowing optimization for a large range of satellites. The radio supports 20 MHz dual channel IQ bandwidth allowing wideband transmission schemes while leaving headroom to correct for Doppler shift or satellite clock drifts. Further, demands for low noise amplifiers and power amplifiers are discussed based on the different link budget scenarios. As verification of the station setup boresight calibration against a known source is showcased. This ground station (and network) could be interesting for amateur radio groups, CubeSat initiatives and research projects.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)