This paper deals with the design and implementation of a fully capable ground station used tofacilitate communications for nanosatellite missions. Nanosatellite missions by their very nature follow aphilosophy of a low cost and rapid development cycle and as such the ground station design is constrained tofall within this same framework. To demonstrate the feasibility of such an approach, an S-BandJUHFIVHFground station design that was implemented for the CanX-2 nanosatellite mission at the University of TorontoInstitute for Aerospace Studies Space Flight Laboratory (UTLAS/SFL) is discussed. The design utilizes acentral TNC based on a GFSK modem and a single-board ARM computer running an open-source Linuxkernel with all other software developed in-house. The TNC is responsible for (de)modulation, control ofground station hardware and the necessary orbital tracking of the spacecraft. A commercially availableactuator used for antenna pointing interfaces with a custom rotator controller that provides added mechanicalfault detection. A GUI software application running on standard PCs acts as the satellite's operatingenvironment. This GUI connects to the ground station TNC using TCP/IP and even permits scientists toremotely control their own experiments onboard the satellite. The software and hardware used for this groundstation was designed to be modular so that the system could be easily modified and upgraded to meet theneeds of future missions. The current ground station has been successfully tested by tracking and receivingsignals from other orbiting satellites and is prepared for full operation after CanX-2's launch in mid 2007.
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