Link budget analysis for a LEO cubesat communication subsystem

Communication links between a satellite and the ground station are subject to a lot of impairments and losses, such as noise and atmospheric attenuations, and Doppler shift effects. It is therefore paramount to design a reliable link that caters for these impairments. The main challenge is to design a communication subsystem that provides enough transmission power to close the link, while being power efficient and at the same time delivering the required link characteristics in terms of effective bit rate and bit error rate. In this paper, we present a link budget analysis for communication between a nano-satellite orbiting at LEO and a low cost mission control ground station. The analysis employs relevant deterministic, empirical, and statistical models as prediction tools, to make pertinent choices for both the flight nano-satellite compliant communication board, on the one hand and the ground station hardware and link protocols, on the other hand.