An Open-Source Beacon Receiver for CubeSat Missions
Open Access
Author:
Hackett, Alexander
Area of Honors:
Electrical Engineering
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Julio Urbina, Thesis Supervisor Dr. Julio V. Urbina, Thesis Supervisor Dr. Sven G Bilén, Faculty Reader Dr. Julio V. Urbina, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
Beacon Receiver SDR GNU Radio Software-Defined Radio USRP GRBR GNU Radio Beacon Receiver Pico GNU Radio Beacon Receiver PGRBR TEC In Situ
Abstract:
This document presents the design of an open-source beacon receiver for in situ ionospheric total electron content (TEC) measurements. Its design was the result of optimizing the physical size and functionality of an existing ground-based TEC instrument that utilizes the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) and the GNU Radio software package. The specific areas of focus in this design included the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) selection process, radio-frequency (RF) front-end receive chain circuitry, and the development of a single printed circuit board (PCB) solution. This system was developed in order to provide a working proof-of-concept instrument, with the intent of integration with a CubeSat payload bus in future revisions.
