Power Control and Data Handling for Cubesat 1U

Abstract

In this paper, we combine two subsystems of CubeSat which are electrical power system and onboard data handling called power control and data handling (PCDH). A power control and data handling (PCDH) can manage data and power involved monitoring power, sending command, and supplying power in one microcontroller. Other CubeSat generally using two microcontrollers to handle it. By using one microcontroller, It can increase the effectiveness of CubeSat space. The main contribution of this paper is proposed to be the first design of PCDH for CubeSat. Design of PCDH covered GUI scroll, serial port connection, and PCB layer for the control unit. For microcontroller, we use a compact design of DUE Core R3. On the PCDH layer, we provide communication data such as I2C, UART, and GPIO so that another payload can be added if needed. The concern of this PCDH research is to handle CubeSat with reaction wheels payload. The results of this research proved that our PCDH can charge the battery, regulates power, controls the switch, and control the direction and speed of the reaction wheels.