Miniaturized Radio

Transceiver for PocketQubes

Exceeding Performance of CubeSat Solutions

Casper Hendrik Broekhuizen, Stefano Speretta,

Mehmet Sevket Uludag, Michael van den Bos, Jasper
Haenen, Alessandra Menicucci, Eberhard Gill

Small Satellites Conference 2020 - SSC20-WKVIII-04

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 Introduction
- PocketQube, another step towards
satellite miniaturization
- A pocketQube unit ‘1P’
- 50mm x 50mm x 50mm
- < 250g
hackaday.com
- ~400 mW

1. Delfi-PQ
2. Hardware Design
3. Software Design
4. Ground Segment
5. Remote Testing
albaorbital.com
2
 Delfi-PQ
- First PocketQube By TUDelft
- 3P PocketQube

Objectives:
- Provide Education
- Demonstrate Technology
- Opportunity for Innovation Iterative Design approach

Dimensions: 50x50x178mm
Main Modules:
- Power Module, OBC, Antenna Deployment, Communications
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 Communications Module
Modularity:
- Mainboard
- Configurable Daughterboard

4
 Hardware Design - Protection ICs
- COTS components selected by radiation tolerance

- Latch up protection
- Limiter Resistors

- Watchdog System
- Load switch for overcurrent
- MCU Monitoring
- External Watchdog

5
 Hardware Design - Mainboard
- MCU: MSP432 by Texas Instruments
- Cortex M4
- 2MB Flash
- 256 kB SRAM
- 512kB FRAM
- Transceiver
- Semtech SX1278
- FSK/GFSK/GMSK
- VHF/UHF
- RS485 Interface + Fire Code Line

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 Hardware Design - Daughterboard
- Low Noise Amplifier

- Power Amplifier
- Maximize Efficiency
- Fully Saturated
- Tuneable power
- 24dBm/0.25W
- 27dBm/0.5W
- 30dBM/1W
- Power-added-efficiency 61%-65%

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 Software Design
Operating System:
- Task Based
- Round Robin

Controlled Over Satellite Bus (RS-485)

Over-The-Air Reprogramming Capability

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 Ground-Space Communication
Protocol:
- AX.25
- G3RUH
- NRZI

- Packet Based with LDPC

- Communication Link Transmission Unit
- Short Block length LDPC Codes

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 Ground-Space Communication
LDPC Decoding:

- Hard Decoding
- Bitflip
- Soft Decoding
- Sum-Product
- Minimum-Sum

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 Testing and Verification

Automated Test Setup

- Module Mounting Board
- Python PyTest
- Test Driven Development

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 Testing and Verification
Automated Test Setup
- XTCE
- Remote webUI + TCP Tunnel

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 Conclusion
- Miniaturized Communications Module
>4x Volume Reduction

- Comparable RF Performance
High PA efficiency

- Coding gain up to 9dB and 6dB in downlink and

uplink

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