A software-defined radio approach for the implementation of ground station receivers

Abstract

As many pico-esats will be released in one launch, the closeness in spatial and spectral separation between different pico-sats may render problems for ground stations in satellite tracking. We implement a ground station receiver with software defined radio (SDR) approach to solve this problem. In the SDR, bandpass sampling is used to down convert RF signal. Single antenna interference cancellation (SAIC) technique with Maximum-Likelihood Sequence Estimator (MLSE) algorithm is used to cancel interference. Doppler shift for transmitter is estimated based on received signals. The SDR-based ground station provides a receiver capable of receiving multi-channel, flexible data rate, flexible modulation type, with co-channel interference (CCI) cancellation capability. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.