Design and implementation of communication subsystem for ISRASAT1 Cube Satellite

Abstract

The essential mission requirement of a satellite is the ability to provide a link to transmit information to and from the ground station. In general the communication system of the cube satellite is divided into two subsystems which are telemetry and data subsystem, and beacon subsystem. The telemetry and data subsystem will ensure continuous communication with the ground station. The beacon subsystem is the main part of communication system of the satellite, which provides information about the satellite and its status in a form of continuous wave (CW) which is encoded using Morse code. The beacon subsystem will be used to located the satellite and identify itself for other stations. In ISRASAT1 which is a nano-satellite designed, built and integrated at the Institute of Space Research and Aerospace (ISRA), the beacon subsystem is separated from telemetry and data transmitter and will operate in VHF band at 128 MHz. For the telemetry and data subsystem, the Data Radio transceiver in UHF band at 868 MHz will be used. In this paper, the hardware and software design and implementation of the communication subsystem of ISRASAT1 Cube satellite will be presented.