Scope

• Learn about availaibility of open source ground station software
• Figure out pipelines and strategies used to do orbit propogation and TLE data collection
• Figure out telemetry/command database storage

Not in scope:

• Networking software stack architecture
• Hardware design and parts selection for the RF frontend & antenna

Orbital GS Requirements

• Real-time requirements need to be considered: there should be minimal latency to begin preparing and sending command packets
  • Minimize latency by having all the commands ready to go before transmit time
• Tracking algorithm to command antenna rotor to align with satellite
  • Also needs to be real-time: either plan out a path or have SGP4 propagator be C++ based
• NORAD TLE & SGP4 propagator algorithm for TLE
• Doppler correction algorithm (GNURadio or an interface with the GNURadio program)
• Remote ground station access, and access from multiple devices
• Software to interface with antenna hardware and controller for RF switch and PAs
• Visualization tool for telemetry

Notes

• Overall, seems like OpenMCT is a commonly cited framework for ground station telemetry visualization
• Most of the open source solutions available are not widely adopted, other than OpenMCT and YAMCS

Papers

Distributed Ground Station Network For CubeSat Communications