Cubesat Research
RESEARCH
In researching different communication devices to use we found two papers that presented an abundance of information on two different designs. The first, from the University of Hawaii, was an active antenna. Designed to oscillate at 5.85 GHz, a band for which an amateur radio frequency license can be acquired, this device can tolerate single point failures and all of the electronics are embedded in it. The second, from Stanford, was the Microhard MHX-2400 transceiver, a device used on GeneSat-1. This device has the benefit of being an off-the-shelf product, meaning it meets certain standards and is already built.
In the end we decided to go with the Microhard transceiver since it has been tested in space while the active antenna has not. The GeneSat paper provided information on different losses, pass times, and error rates. We expect to use similar equipment to the GeneSat mission, so these data give us real values for our calculations. Based on these numbers our best case scenario is getting 7.5Mb per pass and 120Mb per day, or about 6.5 uncompressed images a pass and 100 uncompressed images per day.
