Reverse engineering techniques to optimize facility location of satellite ground stations on building roofs

摘要

The development of small satellites, called CubeSats, at universities gave rise to another concept of ground station and its location site on building roofs. As a facility project, conditioned by urban regulations, the agreement between the ground station engineers and the facility managers is necessary in the site selection process. This paper proposes the application of reverse engineering techniques, such as the laser scanning, to provide them 3D spatial information by the 3D digital reconstruction of the scenario. The main result obtained in the case study at the Technical University of Madrid was the proposal of the re-designed ground station site increasing the antenna performance and considering the established facility constraints. In these building roofs scenarios, the virtual simulation process of telecommunications antennas sites based on the created 3D digital scenario is very useful to optimize the location before the installation process.