Communication link design at 437.5 MHz for a nanosatellite

Abstract

The goal of this work was to design communication solution for the nanosatellite Aalto-2 which is an educational oriented CubeSat project started in 2012 by Aalto University, Finland. The main objective of the Aalto-2 project is to build a nanosatellite for ionospheric studies in the framework of QB50 project. This mission has the goal of studying the lower thermosphere making use of 50 small satellites.Every small satellite in the QB50 satellite constellation should be equipped with a radio communication link and should be able to send the collected scientific measurements, telemetry and health status to the ground as well as receive commands from Earth.Main focus of this study was design the communication link and the antennas according to the requirements set by QB50 consortium. Three communication studies have been done: design and optimization of antennas with the aim of having a good radiation pattern; data budget, in order to know the volume of data that can be downloaded every day; and link budget, to assure a good communication with the ground station. For this purpose, three powerful simulation tools such as STK, CST Studio and AMSAT-IARU Link Model have been used.As a result of this work, a complete communication scheme for the Aalto-2 satellite was designed. The design is in accordance with QB50 requirements and includes a design of an omnidirectional antenna and data budget suitable for QB50 scientific measurements.