Research Summaries

Back Software-Defined Radio (SDR) Payload Research and Development to Support Future CubeSat Missions – Flight Hardware

Fiscal Year 2018
Division Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department Space Systems Academic Group
Investigator(s) Newman, James H.
Sponsor Department of Defense Space (DoD)
Summary This follow-on proposal describes the build and test effort associated with developing a software-defined radio flight payload to perform broadcast and receive experiments at frequencies of current and future interest. Following completion of the build and test of the flight communications payload, NPS will propose or otherwise seek a flight opportunity for this communications capability as a test payload either on a simple CubeSat bus or perhaps on a CubeSat bus as part of our CubeSat and ground station collaboration with AFIT. NPS will use the Mobile CubeSat Command and Control (MC3) ground station network as the ground segment to support these experiments. For example, the MC3 ground station network is currently supporting the PropCube mission, and other CubeSats of national interest are scheduled to be launched soon. This particular proposal will build on the on-going research and development of on-orbit software-defined radios (SDRs) that can not only transmit and receive in existing frequency bands, such as UHF and S-band, but can transmit in bands of great interest in the future, such as X-band and perhaps even Ka-band. These transmitters and receivers are needed for TT&C and for payload applications. This supports DoD Space efforts in the emerging field of very small satellites and, as an applied research effort, requires actual hardware and software at NPS and in the field for test and experiment. The growing acceptance of the CubeSat, a very small satellite, as a means of accomplishing focused research objectives of national interest makes this project of great interest to the Space Systems Academic Group at NPS. The Naval Officers and other students in the NPS Space Systems Engineering and Operations curricula have the opportunity to participate in Directed Studies and Thesis research related to this proposal. The Space Systems curricula benefit from the opportunity to integrate laboratories which use active satellites in orbit and an active network of ground stations. In addition, this work supports the development of national capabilities in space to ultimately benefit the Naval Service and the warfighter.
Keywords CubeSats Software-Defined Radios ground stations
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal