Concurrent development and verification of an all‐software baseband for satellite ground operations

Abstract

Summary Communication systems are adopting all‐software architectures, because of their scalability, extensibility, flexibility, and cost‐effectiveness. This paper introduces a concurrent approach to the development and verification of baseband systems for satellite ground operations based on the behaviour‐driven development methodology. The open‐source GNU Radio development kit is used for developing the software‐defined radio baseband signal processing, as well as simulating the satellite and realistic channel impairments. The system performance at the end shows deviations of less than 1 dB with respect to the ideal performance and the Green Book standards specified by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems.

Validation of a software‐defined baseband system for satellite telemetry and telecommand

“…The impairments also include SDR frontend distortions, including phase noise, I/Q‐imbalance, and DC offset. 6 …”

“…This was followed by the verification process which involved extensive simulations, evaluation, and optimization of the SDB system performance. A small part of this verification process, which was done for binary phase‐shift keying (BPSK) and several CCSDS FEC codes, was presented by the authors in another work 6 . The next step required to ensure the reliability of the SDB system is validation, a process that is carried out on a laboratory testbed and orbiting satellites and is the subject of this paper.…”

“…Thus, it does not consider the effects of hardware tolerances and their effects on synchronization. Mwakyanjala et al 6 presented the evaluation of TM receiver performance under simulated channel conditions. This evaluation did not involve a laboratory testbed, and thus, it did not fully capture the synchronization issues.…”

Feasibility of using a software‐defined baseband for multiple space per aperture (MSPA) ground operations

“…A thorough analysis, specification, and implementation of the channel impairments listed above can be found in a previous work 10 . A summary of the specification for S‐band telemetry links is presented in Table 2.…”

“…In this work, we present the feasibility study of operating the third CCSDS MSPA method, multiple uplink carriers, on a low‐cost software‐defined baseband (SDB). This low‐cost CCSDS‐compliant SDB has been successfully designed, 9 verified through simulations, 10 and validated through laboratory test bed and field tests. The SDB was developed using GNU Radio 11 development kit and employs the USRP 12 commercial‐off‐the‐shelf (CoTS) front end.…”