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Projecte llegit

Títol: S-Band communications design and implementation for 3Cat-6

Estudiants que han llegit aquest projecte:

Director/a: PARK, HYUK

Departament: FIS

Títol: S-Band communications design and implementation for 3Cat-6

Data inici oferta: 10-01-2022     Data finalització oferta: 10-09-2022


Estudis d'assignació del projecte:
    DG ENG AERO/SIS TEL
Tipus: Individual
 
Lloc de realització: EETAC
 
Nom del segon director/a (UPC): Adrian Perez
Departament 2n director/a:
 
Paraules clau:
Satellite Communication, CubeSat, S-Band
 
Descripció del contingut i pla d'activitats:
The Nanosatellite and Payload Laboratory (UPC NanoSat Lab) is a
cross-departmental initiative belonging to the Barcelona School
of Telecommunications Engineering. Its main activity is the
development and design of nano-satellite missions, with its focus
on the exploration of innovative small spacecraft system concepts
and developing and integrating subsystems and payloads for Earth
Observation.
The laboratory is currently developing the 'Remote Sensing and
Interference Detector with Radiometry and Vegetation Analysis',
also known as RITA Payload, which is one of the Remote Sensing
payloads that was selected by the second GRSS Student Grand
Challenge in 2019 to fly on board of the AlainSat-1. This Payload
is being developed under the supervision of the United Arab
Emirates University's National Space Science and Technology
Center.

This thesis aims to contribute to the development of the RITA
mission with the design and implementation of the payload's S-
Band communications.

The main tasks to be developed are the following:

1. Carry out a literature review on Space Communications.
1.1. Detailed study of the industry's evolution along the
years and its current situation in the New Space Era.
1.2. Detailed study of Nanosatellites: their evolution along
the years, their possible uses and their importance in future
missions among others.

2. Research the Payload and its requirements.
2.1. Research the Payloads data generation (how much data will
be collected and must be transmitted over a fixed period of
time).
2.2. Research the hardware constraints for data handling.
2.3. Research the antenna's parameters and the Montsec S-Band
ground station.

3. Research S-Band Communications and the technologies that
can solve the previous requirements.
3.1. Research on the common coding, modulations and CCSDS
protocols used in S-Band Communications.
3.2. Research on the peculiarities of S-Band Communications
with regards to propagation, typical fading scenarios, frequency
fillings and allocations.
3.3. Carry out a Link Budget and Bit Budget with the scenario
parameters.

4. Implement the chosen technologies in the satellite and
the ground station.
4.1. Development of software to assist the communications with
the space-borne S-Band transceiver to allow reception and
transmission of compliant packets.
4.2. Development of software to extract the received data in
real-time and process it within operations' pipelines in both
space-borne S-Band transceiver and Ground Station.
4.3. Development and implementation of the S-Band protocols in
the currently operating Montsec S-Band Ground Station owned by
the NanoSat Laboratory.

5. Testing and verification of the S-Band communications
before the launch.
5.1. Familiarization with SDR transceivers based on Analog
Devices chips such as the AD9369 or the AD9364
5.2. Physical channel test
5.3. Channel coding test
5.4. Test and verification of the whole S-band Communication
design
 
Overview (resum en anglès):
The Nanosatellite and Payload Laboratory (UPC NanoSat Lab) is a cross-departmental initiative belonging to the Barcelona School of Telecommunications Engineering. Its main activity is the development and design of nano-satellite missions, with its focus on the exploration of innovative small spacecraft system concepts and developing and integrating subsystems and payloads for Earth Observation.

The laboratory is currently developing the 'Remote Sensing and Interference Detector with Radiometry and Vegetation Analysis', also known as RITA Payload, which is one of the Remote Sensing payloads that was selected by the second GRSS Student Grand Challenge in 2019 to fly on board of the AlainSat-1. This Payload is being developed under the supervision of the IEEE GRSS.

This thesis aims to contribute to the development of the RITA mission with the design and implementation of the payload's S-Band communications. It begins with a study of satellite communications and particularly S-Band, focusing on its usefulness in the downlink of scientific results. Moreover, it presents a study of the communications scenario containing orbital simulations as well as a link budget, providing crucial information for the system's design and decisive in establishing the necessary requirements. The standards used by the European Space Agency for its missions are evaluated for their viability in this mission, with the boundary conditions that apply to them. Thus, a variation of traditional communication schemes is developed for the RITA mission, and the design process is explained in detail.

The main core of the thesis consists of the implementation and design of the system. This is been split into three main sections, the application layer, the channel coding and the physical layer.
On the one hand, the application layer includes the necessary protocols, frame design and systems to transform files into packets to be sent, and on the other way around, to recover files from a number of packets.
On the other hand, channel coding includes all the coding and decoding systems to ensure that the system is able to recover the initial data if errors occur in the physical channel of the transmission and reception.
Finally, the physical layer includes the transmission of symbols and the reception of signals, together with the necessary signal processing techniques to ensure the initially transmitted frames can be recovered correctly even if deep fading¿s or Doppler shifts have affected the received system.

The thesis also presents several tests that verify the correct functioning of the system using two ADALM-PLUTO SDR devices, representative of the hardware that will be used in the satellite, to work as transmitter and receiver.

The thesis concludes with a verification of the system, commenting on the difficulties and problems that have arisen during its development, and the work that should be carried out before the launch.

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