Reference Ground Station Design for University Satellite Missions with Varying Communication Requirements

摘要

The Georgia Institute of Technology will support five small satellite missions within a two year frame (2017 to 2019). Each satellite has different communication requirements because the mission requirements and hardware components are different for every mission. This paper discusses a common ground station architecture which will support every small satellite mission from Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech will use a network of three different ground stations, utilizing commercial off the shelf (COTS) operations software, software defined radios (SDR), and open source tracking software. This paper describes the Georgia Tech ground station and how challenges were addressed to meet the multi-mission communication requirements.