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ISM S-Band Cubesat Radio Designed for the Polysat System Board

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ISM S-Band Cubesat Radio Designed for the Polysat System Board ISM S-BAND CUBESAT RADIO DESIGNED FOR THE POLYSAT SYSTEM BOARD A Thesis presented to the Faculty of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science in Electrical Engineering by Craig Lee Francis June 2016 © 2016 Craig Lee Francis ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii COMMITTEE MEMBERSHIP TITLE: ISM S-Band CubeSat Radio designed for the PolySat System Board AUTHOR: Craig Lee Francis DATE SUBMITTED: June 2016 COMMITTEE CHAIR: Dr. Dennis Derickson, Ph.D. Department Chair of Electrical Engineering COMMITTEE MEMBER: Dr. Jordi Puig-Suari, Ph.D. Professor of Aerospace Engineering COMMITTEE MEMBER: Dr. John Bellardo, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Computer Science iii ABSTRACT ISM S-Band CubeSat Radio designed for the PolySat System Board Craig Lee Francis Cal Poly’s PolySat CubeSat satellites have begun to conduct more complex and scientifically significant experiments. The large data products generated by these missions demonstrate the necessity for higher data rate communication than currently provided by the PolySat UHF radio. This thesis leverages the proliferation of consumer wireless monolithic transceivers to develop a 250kbps to 2000kbps, 2W CubeSat radio operating within the 2.45GHz Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) radio band. Estimating a link budget for a realistic CubeSat leads to the conclusion that this system will require a large deployable CubeSat antenna, large earth station satellite dish, and a fine-pointing attitude control system. Noise floor measurements of a CubeSat ground station demonstrate that terrestrial ISM interference can be minimized to below the thermal noise floor by carefully choosing the operating frequency. The radio is specifically designed as a daughter board for the PolySat System Board with a direct interface to the embedded Linux microprocessor. A state-of-the-art ZigBee transceiver evaluation board is measured to confirm its suitability for a CubeSat radio. A schematic is developed, which integrates the transceiver, power amplifier, low noise amplifier, amplifier protection circuitry, switching regulators, and RF power measurement into a single printed circuit board assembly (PCBA). The circuitry is then squeezed into a high-density, 1.4” x 3.3” layout. The PCBA is then manufactured, troubleshot, tuned, and characterized. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. vi LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... vii CHAPTER 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 PolySat/CubeSat Laboratory Background ................................................... 1 1.2 CubeSat Communication Frequencies ........................................................ 3 1.3 Motivation and Objectives of the S-Band Radio .......................................... 6 2 Summary of UHF Communication System ................................................................ 7 3 Increasing Receive Signal Strength ......................................................................... 14 4 ISM S-Band Radio System Requirements and Overview ........................................ 17 4.1 Component Trade Studies ......................................................................... 18 4.2 ISM Noise Floor ......................................................................................... 21 4.3 Frequency Licensing ................................................................................. 39 4.4 Link Budget Estimates ............................................................................... 41 4.4.1 Noise Floor Calculations ............................................................................ 41 4.4.2 Satellite with Patch Antenna ...................................................................... 45 4.4.3 Satellite with Deployable Dish ................................................................... 48 4.5 Evaluation Board Testing .......................................................................... 49 4.5.1 Evaluation Board Receive Sensitivity Measurements ............................... 51 4.5.2 Evaluation Board Doppler Tolerance Measurement .................................. 58 5 Schematic Development .......................................................................................... 67 5.1 Intrepid System Board Interface ................................................................ 69 5.2 Transceiver and RF Front End .................................................................. 83 5.3 Power Regulation .................................................................................... 100 5.4 Transceiver Frequency Source ............................................................... 107 5.5 Amplifier Protection and RF Power Measurement ................................... 110 5.6 Development Interface ............................................................................ 128 5.7 Receive and Transmit Power Draw Estimation ....................................... 129 6 Layout .................................................................................................................... 132 7 PCBA Bring Up and Testing .................................................................................. 146 7.1 Initial Bring Up and Troubleshooting ....................................................... 146 7.2 Balun AC Coupling Issue ......................................................................... 148 7.3 TCXO Voltage Divider Issue .................................................................... 149 7.4 Antenna Selection Switch Issue .............................................................. 150 7.5 Receiver Desensitization Issue ............................................................... 151 7.6 RF Leakage Issue ................................................................................... 152 7.7 2000kbps Packet Drop Issue ................................................................... 156 7.8 ISIR PA Tuning and Transmit Power Measurements .............................. 157 7.9 ISIR Receive Sensitivity Measurements .................................................. 164 8 Future Work ........................................................................................................... 170 9 Summary and Conclusion ...................................................................................... 172 REFERENCES .............................................................................................................. 173 Appendix A: Intrepid S-Band ISM Radio R1 Schematic ................................................ 179 v LIST OF TABLES Table Page Table 1: Sensitivity of PolySat UHF Radio, Williams [5].................................................. 10 Table 2: Intrepid S-Band ISM Radio Derived Requirements ........................................... 17 Table 3: Important Components and Figures of Merit ..................................................... 21 Table 4: Estimated Satellite Noise Floor ......................................................................... 42 Table 5: Estimated Ground Station Noise Floor .............................................................. 43 Table 6: AT86RF233 Data Rate versus Required SNR .................................................. 44 Table 7: Patch Antenna: Uplink Budget .......................................................................... 47 Table 8: Patch Antenna: Downlink Budget ...................................................................... 47 Table 9: Dish Antenna: Uplink Budget ............................................................................ 49 Table 10: Dish Antenna: Downlink Budget ...................................................................... 49 Table 11: Evaluation Board Receive Sensitivity Test Results ......................................... 58 Table 12: Doppler Shifter Circuit Components ................................................................ 61 Table 13: Doppler Tolerance, Receive Sensitivity Test Results...................................... 66 Table 14: System Board Daughterboard B Connectors Pinout Information [30] ............. 71 Table 15: Receive Power Draw Estimation ................................................................... 130 Table 16: Transmit Power Draw Estimation .................................................................. 131 Table 17: PCB 4 Layer Stackup .................................................................................... 143 Table 18: Final Power Amplifier Tuning Values ............................................................ 163 Table 19: Receive Sensitivity Test Results: ISIR compared to Evaluation Board ......... 169 Table 20: Intrepid ISM S-Band Radio Final Specifications ........................................... 172 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page Figure 1: IPEX, PolySat 1U CubeSat (10x10x11cm) [1] ................................................... 2 Figure 2: PolySat Earth Station, 437MHz Yagi Antenna Array ......................................... 3 Figure 3: CubeSat Communication Systems Table Snippet, Bryan Klofas [3] .................. 4 Figure 4: CubeSat Transmit Frequencies (2003 to 2014), Bryan Klofas [4]...................... 4 Figure 5: CubeSat Satellite Service Licenses, (2003 to 2014), Bryan
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