Date of Award

Spring 2023

Access Restriction

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Electrical Engineering

School or College

Seaver College of Science and Engineering

First Advisor

Gustavo Vejarano

Abstract

In this thesis, we present the design and implementation of a CubeSat receiver system using the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) and GNU Radio. The goal of this project is to develop a low-cost and flexible ground station capable of receiving telemetry and payload data from CubeSats in real time. The CubeSat receiver operates in the UHF frequency range with a center frequency of 435 MHz and uses a software-defined radio (SDR) approach to provide wideband signal processing and demodulation capabilities. The satellite transceiver transmits an Ax.25 Transciever packet every 1 second using the Pumpkin CubeSat kit programmed in MPLab.

To achieve this goal, we discuss the design considerations for the receiver system, including the selection of suitable hardware components and the development of custom software blocks in GNU Radio. We also developed the GFSK-based transmitter and receiver in GNU Radio, as well as a tracking system for the satellite. To decode the Ax.25 radio packet transmitted by the Pumpkin CubeSat kit, we developed an Ax.25 deframer in GNU Radio to decode the received signal.

Our results demonstrate that the CubeSat receiver is capable of receiving and demodulating AX.25 formatted radio signals from Transciever. Additionally, we show that the receiver system is scalable and can be easily adapted for use with other CubeSat missions. Overall, our work provides a practical solution for CubeSat communication and lays the groundwork for future developments in low-cost CubeSat ground station technology.

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