Nanosat Ka-Band Communications - A Paradigm Shift in Small Satellite Data Throughput

• Main Authors: King, Jan, Ness, John, Bonin, Grant, Brett, Michael, Faber, Daniel
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@USU 2012
• Subjects: Antarctic; South Pole; The Antarctic; Antarc*; South pole
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/smallsat/2012/all2012/54; https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1060&context=smallsat

Earth observation applications are rapidly being serviced using low-cost small satellites, improving economic and environmental management and creating new markets. The technology driver of this trend is a series of steady improvements in attitude control sensors and microprocessor technologies which have allowed small spacecraft to achieve arc-minute to arc-second pointing capabilities. These advancements have, in turn, enabled high performance and high resolution remote sensing instruments to be deployed on smaller and lower-cost platforms. The constraints placed upon small satellite design for remote sensing missions have traditionally been power availability, heat dissipation and aperture requirements however as small satellite sensor technology approaches the 1 meter resolution threshold, data throughput is becoming a new and particularly challenging constraint on mission design. Ever-improving sensor resolution increases the demand on data transfer in a non-linear fashion even when corresponding improvements in data compression techniques are included. Hence, very small satellites are rapidly becoming data-bound. Approaches to deal with this constraint to date have been based on increased memory size of the payload computer however this does not solve the problem, instead it focuses it. A more pragmatic solution to accessing the vast amounts of data harvested by small satellites in a timely manner is the development of higher speed data downlinks. If small satellites are to satisfy increasing global awareness demands, broadband telemetry links from small satellites will be required. Otherwise missions will ultimately be limited by in-orbit data backlog. The Antarctic Broadband satellite program has developed miniaturized communications technology specifically designed to meet the data transfer requirements of such missions. Funded under the Australia Space Research Program, the project consortium, comprised of industry and research organizations, developed a number of innovative solutions to meet the challenge of transferring data from the South Pole to anywhere on Earth at very high speed. Over the past year, adaptation of this technology to the more general challenge of high-speed Nanosatellite telemetry downlinks has yielded a surprisingly versatile communication system capability. This capability can provide between 60 and 120 Mbps at 1 Watt RF output power to small Earth stations when operating from a standard Nanosatellite platform, such as SFL’s Generic Nanosatellite Bus (GNB). This paper describes the system hardware and software architecture developed, the applicability of this new technology to a variety of candidate mission types and the available frequency bands which will support a wide range of mission concepts, including deep space missions. The outcome of applying this state-of-the-art innovation will be a paradigm shift in capability for Nanosat spacecraft and therefore the versatility and value of missions. This new functionality can be incorporated immediately on Nanosats and all larger satellite platforms, enabling new classes of missions for spacecraft of this size. Further size reductions are planned that will even extend this capability to 1U CubeSats.