TEAM ANANT

A N O VERVIEW O F

Telemetry and Ground Station

Subsystem

December 2019
Contents
1 Introduction 2

2 Digital Communication 3
2.1 Source encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2 Channel Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3 Modulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.4 Antenna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.5 Channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.6 Demodulation and decoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.7 Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.8 Data Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.8.1 Error Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.8.2 Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.8.3 Forward Error Correction (FEC) . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.8.4 Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) . . . . . . . . . . . 11

3 Satellite Communication 13
3.1 Doppler Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.2 Link Budget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

4 Paper and YouTube Links 19

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1 Introduction
Once a satellite has been launched, how is one supposed to know if the
satellite is dead or alive, or has careened away into the eternity? One of the
essential functions that a satellite must perform is to maintain communica-
tion with the earth. In the absence of communication, it will be reduced to
nothing but a piece of space junk.

The telemetry and ground station sub-system provides vital communi-

cation to and from the satellite. A Cubesat communication system has three
primary functions, (1) to transmit a tracking signal, (2) download telemetry
to a ground station and (3) to receive commands from a ground station. A
satellite communication system is often referred to as a TT&C (Tracking,
Telemetry and Command) system. These three functions are detailed be-
low:

Telemetry: The measurements made by the payload 1 are sent to the

ground station by means of an antenna. This is called downlinking of
data

Command: The ground station is that system which has a direct user in-
terface with the satellite from the earth.Control of other parts of the
satellite, if any, is possible only through the ground station after the
satellite has been launched. To control the satellite, commands are
sent from the ground station using an antenna, which in turn are re-
ceived using an antenna present on the satellite, a part of the teleme-
try system. The data processed on-board the satellite is transmitted
down using the same or a different antenna. This data is received by
the ground station and decoded, for further usage.

Tracking: The satellite sends a tracking signal, called the beacon, con-
tinuously. This beacon contains a unique ID assigned to the satel-
lite and critical housekeeping data such as on-board temperature that
provide the ground station necessary information about the health of
the satellite.

Designing communication system for a nanosatellite is challenging as

nanosatellites have very limited power generation capability. Additional
constraint is the small size of the nanosatellite which makes complex an-
tenna structures in-feasible.
1 Thepayload of a satellite represents the purpose for which the satellite is launched.
For example, if a satellite is meant to measure flux of photons in ionosphere, these flux
measurements are the payload data. If the satellite is meant to click images, the image data
is the payload data.

2
Like any other application of electronics, communications can also be ana-
log or digital. Due to several advantages like better performance in non-
ideal conditions, easier implementation, we will be using digital commu-
nication for our satellite.
Understanding satellite communication requires you to understand how
communication systems work. Therefore, we introduce digital communi-
cation and it’s elements first, and in the subsequent sections, we look at
how these principles are applied to satellite communication.

2 Digital Communication

Figure 1: A digital communication system overview

The communication system overview displayed in the figure above shows

the building blocks of a digital communication system, together with an il-
lustration of in what format the signals and waveforms are represented
throughout the system. The combination of these individual blocks de-
scribes the process in converting digital data to a RF signal, transfer it over
a channel, and recovering the sent data at the receiver.

2.1 Source encoding

Source encoding is the process of producing an efficient digital represen-
tation of the data to be transmitted. This data can either be collected from
analog or digital sources. Several processes can be applied to the sources
for building up the final informational data, ready for transmission. These
processes range from sampling and quantization of analog data, to differ-
ent coding techniques of the digital data. Compression can be applied to
reduce the size of the data. The purpose of source encoding is to reduce the

3
need for system resources of bandwidth and/or energy per bit by remov-
ing some of the redundant data.

2.2 Channel Encoding

While source encoding reduces redundancy in data, channel encoding adds
redundancy to it. Why? This is done because the communication channel
is free space, and the signal transmitted from the satellite in orbit to the
ground station on earth will be affected by noise and interference. By chan-
nel encoding, it is possible in some degree to reconstruct the information
carried in the transmitted signal, even if it is corrupted by noise, interfer-
ence or fading.

2.3 Modulation
Before modulation, all data is in digital format.This needs to be converted
into an RF (Radio Frequency) signal suitable for the channel. Modulation
is a technique by which some parameters of a sinusoidal signal like am-
plitude, frequency or phase to encode information. It is a very essential
part of a communication system. A modulation scheme has to be appropri-
ately chosen making a compromise between reliability, speed and power
consumption of the transmitter and receiver, and also their complexity to
some extent. Read up about modulation here . Make sure you look at digi-
tal modulation schemes in particular.

2.4 Antenna
This modulated signal is transmitted using an antenna. An antenna is a
transducer that converts sinusoidally varying voltages and currents to elec-
tromagnetic waves or vice versa. It is electromagnetic waves that travel
across space and carry the information that the discrete bits have. A trans-
mitting antenna thus turns electrical signals into radio waves so they can
travel long distances while a receiving antenna converts the EM waves it
receives to electrical signals. An excellent resource for obtaining a first ex-
posure to antennas is the antenna throry website. Antenna theory itself is
extremely vast, so make sure you don’t get lost and stick to the basics.

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2.5 Channel

The channel is the medium through which the modulated electromagnetic

waves propagate. In a wireless communication system as a satellite link,
the channel is the open air. This is where the primary source of error ex-
ists. The transmitted signal attenuates 2 due to the path loss in the distance
between the transmitter and receiver. In a satellite link there could be at-
mospheric conditions that causes additional attenuation to the signal.
The relationship between the informational signal and noise, is expressed
as the Signal-Noise-Ratio (SNR). A signal with low SNR could cause errors
in transmission.
In information theory, the Shannon–Hartley theorem tells the maxi-
mum rate at which information can be transmitted over a communications
channel of a specified bandwidth in the presence of noise.The theorem
establishes Shannon’s channel capacity for such a communication link, a
bound on the maximum amount of error-free information per time unit
that can be transmitted with a specified bandwidth in the presence of the
noise interference.

S
C = Wlog2 (1 +
) (1)
N
where C is channel capacity (bps), W is the message bandwidth and S/N is
the signal power to noise power ratio.

2.6 Demodulation and decoding

At the receiver side, an antenna intercepts the incoming electromagnetic
waves and converts them to RF sinusoidal currents/voltages. A demodu-
lator applies the reverse process of modulation to recover back a bit stream
from this received signal. These bits are then decoded to make sense of the
information received from the satellite.

2 attenuation refers to diminshing of signal amplitude with distance.

5
 In summary, a digital communication system consists of three parts:
(1) a transmitter, (2) a channel, and (3) a receiver. The transmitter consists
of a source, which encodes data in an efficient manner, a channel encoder
which adds redundancy for reliable data transmission, a modulator, which
converts the data to RF sinusoids which are transduced to electromagnetic
waves by an antenna. These waves propagate through the channel, suf-
fering losses along the way and reach the receiver. The receiving antenna
amplifies these weak received signals, demodulates and decodes them to
obtain the required data.

2.7 Protocol
In telecommunication, a communication protocol is a system of rules that
allow two or more entities of a communications system to transmit infor-
mation via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. The protocol de-
fines the rules, syntax, semantics and synchronization of communication
and possible error recovery methods. Protocols may be implemented by
hardware, software, or a combination of both. Essentially, the sender and
receiver need to have a common set of rules that both agree upon, in order
for the received 1s and 0s (remember, we’re using digital communication!)
to make sense. Nanosatellites generally use AX.25 protocol

Under AX.25, transmissions are sent in small blocks of data, called frames.
There are three general types of AX.25 frames:

• Information frame (I frame);

• Supervisory frame (S frame); and

• Unnumbered frame (U frame).

Each frame is made up of several smaller groups, called fields. The frame
structure is shown in the following figures. Note that the Info field exists
only in certain frame, PID stands for Protocol Identifier and FCS stands for
Frame Check Sequence. Each field is made up of an integral number of

Figure 2: U and S frame construction

octets (8-bit byte of binary data) and serves the specific function outlined
below. All fields except the Frame Check Sequence (FCS) are transmitted
low-order bit first. FCS is transmitted bit 15 first.

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 Figure 3: I frame construction

Flag The flag field is one octet long. Because the flag delimits frames,
it occurs at both the beginning and end of each frame. Two frames may
share one flag, which would denote the end of the first frame and the start
of the next frame. A flag consists of a zero followed by six ones followed
by another zero, or 01111110 (7E hex). What happens if this sequence of 0
followed by six 1s followed by another 0 appears somewhere in the data?
It will be treated like a flag, which shuldn’t be the case. Thus, something
called bit-stuffing is done, where a 0 is forcibly inserted in the data when-
ever a 0 followed by five consecutive 1s appears. At the receiver end, such
extra zeros are simply removed or ignored. As a result of bit stuffing, this
sequence is not allowed to occur anywhere else inside a complete frame.

Address The address field identifies both the source of the frame and its
destination. In addition, the address field contains the command/response
information and facilities for Layer 2 repeater operation.

Control The control field identifies the type of frame being passed and
controls several attributes of the Layer 2 connection. There are three for-
mates of the control field for the three types of frames.The control field can
be one or two octets long.

PID The Protocol Identifier (PID) field appears in information frames (I

and UI) only. It identifies which kind of higher layer protocol, if any, is
being implemented. If no layer 3 protocol is in use, its value is 11110000
(0xF0).

Info The information (I) field conveys user data from one end of the link
to the other. The information field contains the actual data that needs to be
sent. The I field defaults to a length of 256 octets and contains an integral
number of octets. These constraints apply prior to the insertion of zero
bits as a part of bit stuffing. Any information in the I field is passed along
the link transparently, except for the zero-bit insertion necessary to prevent
flags from accidentally appearing in the I field.

Frame Check Sequence (FCS) The Frame-Check Sequence (FCS) is a sixteen-

bit CRC checksum number calculated by both the sender and the receiver

7
of a frame. It ensures that the frame was not corrupted by the transmission
medium. Note that the FCS field of an AX.25 frame is sent most-significant
bit first. All other fields are sent with each octet’s least-significant bit first.

The AX25 protocol provides two distinct methods for data transmis-
sion:

• Connection oriented transmissions

• Connectionless transmissions

The first method employs feedback mechanisms to ensure that the trans-
mitted dataframes are received correctly by the receiver, while the second
method simply transmits the data without further link management. In
other words, in connection-less mode, all AX.25 packets have numbers as-
signed to them and feedback occurs once after several packets are received.
In connection-oriented mode on the contrary, ARQ is followed i.e. the re-
ceiver sends an ACK (acknowledge) signal after every packet is received.
The AX25 protocol has been described very minimalistically here, but
all the main mechanisms of data transmission have been described. Frames
are sent from transmitter to receiver and each frame must be acknowl-
edged or rejected by the receiver, unless it is sent connection-less. Error
detection is handled by the CRC algorithm for bit errors and timers for lost
frames. Finally error correction is handled by re-transmitting frames and
thus transmission errors lead to reduced effective bandwidth.

2.8 Data Communication

A data communication system is often expressed as layers in a model re-
ferred to the OSI (Open Systems Interconnect) model. This is a theoretic
model, but describes the ideas in data communication well. The principle
of the layers is that a layer provides services to the above layers, and re-
ceives services from the layers below.
In order to manage the flow of data we need to define the higher ab-
straction layers for a reliable data transfer to exist.
The services referred to in the layered model could be error detection
and correction, management of multiple users, network routing, data pre-
sentation and so on. Different protocols are used to achieve this, but in
order to ensure a reliable data transfer, we will need to present the unreli-
able raw data stream from the physical layer in a format that can be pro-
vided to the higher abstraction layers. This is where framing is used. The
raw bit stream is divided into chunks of data, called frames. These frames
can consist of the informational data together with addresses of sender and
receiver, redundancy for error control and other protocol data.

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2.8.1 Error Handling
Error handling will need to be introduced early in the communication sub-
system to ensure reliable data transfer. The redundancy added in the chan-
nel encoding process can be used for detecting errors, and correcting er-
rors. One of the simplest ways to do this is parity - A single bit can be
used to mark if the frame has an even or odd number of 1-bits.For exam-
ple, 11000001 has an odd parity (number of 1s is odd, parity bit = 0) while
11110000 has even parity (even number of 1s, parity bit = 1).

What technique that should be used for error handling should be de-
fined by the probability for bit errors and the importance of correct recep-
tion of all the transmitted data. Some of the error handling features relies
on that transmission can occur in both directions, and other are able to en-
sure reliable communication in connectivity where transmission only can
occur in one direction.

In a simplex connection, there is only transmission in one direction,

e.g. from the satellite to the ground station. A half-duplex transmission
can carry transmission in both directions, but not simultaneously. The full-
duplex connectivity can carry transmission in both directions.

2.8.2 Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC)

Every communication channel will inevitably introduce errors in the data.
In case of digital communication, the data is a stream of bits (no pun in-
tended). A bit is said to be in error if it gets flipped (i.e. A 1 becomes a 0
and vice versa). So how do you know if the stream that you’ve received is
in error? Simple, the sender and receiver decide that each packet will have
a certain property. In this way, if any bit gets flipped, the property will be
violated and you’ll know the packet is in error. One of the ways to detect
errornous packets is the CRC checksum.
The CRC checksum is the result of a mathematical function that is cal-
culated from the data to be transmitted, and applied to the data frame be-
fore transmitting. In the receiver the same function is used to calculate the
checksum of the received data, the two checksums are matched and any
errors in the received data will cause a mismatch, thus errors are detected.
Note that CRC only tells us if there has been an error, it can’t locate the
position of error nor can it correct the error.
Let’s have a look at a simple CRC example. This is easy and fun to do,
so work it out along as you read this. First, all arithmetic operations on bits
are XOR based, i.e.

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 0+0=0
0+1=1
1+0=1
1+1=0

The CRC method calculates a checksum using what is called a gener-

ator polynomial G ( x ). For example a 16-bit generator polynomial could
look like this:

G ( x ) = x16 + x12 + x5 + 1

which can be represented in a binary form as 1000 1000 0001 0000. where
each bit represents the coefficient of each term in G ( x ). A similar polyno-
mial expression could be assumed for the message bit sequence M ( x ). To
calculate the checksum, we do the following:

1. Append to the message sequence as many zeros as the highest degree

term in the generator polynomial G ( x ) (n zeros if the degree of G ( x )
is n)

2. Divide this resultant sequence by the generator (Modulo-2 division)

3. Obtain the n-bit remainder. The remainder is the n-bit checksum that
is appended to the message sequence before transmission.

Let’s look at an example of generating a 4-bit CRC checksum. Note that

G ( x ) is a fourth degree polynomial G ( x ) = x4 + x + 1 and the message
sequence on which CRC is to be computed is 1101011011.

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2.8.3 Forward Error Correction (FEC)
Forward Error Correction (FEC) is a family of coding schemes that works
without feedback from the receiver. The receiver can utilize the extra re-
dundancy added, to calculate where possible bit errors have occurred, and
thereby correct them. Several types of coding schemes exist but they shall
not be detailed here. Suffice to note that there exist coding techniques that
add redundancy to the code such that the source of error can be identified
and the error corrected without requesting the transmitter to re-transmit
information.However if bits are lost, or a code block can not be correctly
decoded by the receiver, that given frame will in either hand be lost.

2.8.4 Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ)

Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) is based on the principle of detecting
transmission errors, and request the sender for retransmission of the erro-

11
neous data frames. The receiver will need to acknowledge the data frames
that were received correctly. Contrary to FEC, the transmitter will need
feedback from the receiver in ARQ, frames sent will either need an Ac-
knowledged message (ACK) or Not-Acknowledged message (NACK) from
the receiver.

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3 Satellite Communication

Figure 4: Satellite communication

In a space system the satellite and ground station must be in line of

sight of each other, and using frequencies above 100 MHz for penetrating
the Earths ionosphere, to achieve a communication link.
Understanding the satellites orbit is important in analyzing the com-
munication link. We will need to describe where the satellite is relative to
the earth. Satellite orbits can be divided into these three general orbit types:

Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) Has an altitude of 35 786 km. With this
fixed height and an inclination angle of 0o it will appear stationary. The
inclination is defined as the angle where the orbit crosses the equatorial
plane. This will give the satellite 24 hour period, and observed from the
earth it will have a fixed position above equator.

Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) Has altitudes between 5000–10 000 km.

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Has altitudes between 500–1 500 km. This is the
most interesting orbit type for CubeSats, due to low altitudes. The small
size of a CubeSat restricts the practical usage in higher orbits, e.g. high
enough power for the communication system will be difficult to achieve.

Consider the orbital plane diagram shown. If the semimajor and semimi-
nor axes are of equal length a = b , then the orbit is said to be circular. In
this document we shall only consider a cicular LEO orbit for all expressions
obtained henceforth.

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Figure 5: The orbit as it appears in the orbital plane, where O is the centre
of the earth and C is the centre of the ellipse. The relationship between
semimajor a and semiminor b axes defines eccentricity e

Figure 6: Relationship between distance d and elevation angle El between

a ground station and a satellite.

The relationship between the distance and elevation angle for the ground
station and the satellite is shown in figure 5, and can be calculated the fol-
lowing way; The elevation angle El is found as:

rs.sin(γ) sin(γ)
cos( El ) = = 2 1 (2)
d re re
[1 + ( rs ) − 2( rs ).cos(γ)] 2
The distance can then be calculated as"

14
 r
re 2 re
d= 1+() − 2( ).cos(γ).rs (3)
rs rs
the elevation angle is plotted versus the distance for a 400 km orbit height
in figure 7. When modeling the satellite link, the distance and free space

Figure 7: Elevation angle versus distance between a ground station and a

satellite at a circular LEO of 400 km.

losses will dominate the degeneration of the signal strength. The link bud-
get must therefore account for the worst case distance the satellite will have
from the ground station.

3.1 Doppler Effect

Doppler shift is a phenomenon where a constant frequency is changed be-
cause the receiver is moving relative to the transmitter. The change in fre-
quency is proportional to the relative speed between the receiver and the
transmitter. The frequency will increase when the receiver is moving to-
wards the transmitter and decrease when moving away.

A common analogy is a train sounding the whistle, when moving to-

wards you the sound of the whistle will be more high pitched than when
the train moves away.

Mathematically,
v
f r = (1 + ) f t (4)
c
where:
f r = received frequency v = the speed of the transmitter relative to the

15
receiver c = the speed of light = 2.99792458 × 108 m/s f t =transmitted
frequency
v
∆ f = ft = fr − ft (5)
c
where ∆ f = frequency deviation or Doppler shift
A LEO-satellite has a relatively high speed compared to a fixed point on
the earth, so as it enters the horizon, any radio-content will be received at a
higher Doppler-shifted frequency than what the satellite is transmitting at.
Also, radio-signals transmitted from the ground will not be received at the
satellite at any fixed frequency unless the frequency-shift is correct at the
ground.

3.2 Link Budget

The link budget is the output of a link analysis of a communication system.
Through the calculation of gains and losses it is possible to obtain infor-
mation about transmission and reception quality through noise sources,
signal attenuation and other effects throughout the link, thus providing us
a overall system insight. The information will expose if the system meets
required specifications.
The basic idea is that when all gains are added and all losses subtracted
from the supplied power, what remains (the received signal level) should
be greater than the receiver sensitivity (or minimum signal level that re-
ceiver can detect) for a successful link to be established.
The following diagram gives a clear, although representative, picture:

Figure 8: Link Budget

16
 The received power in the budget could be expressed as:

Pr = Pt + Gt + Gr − FSPL − PLF − Lt,pnt − Lr,pnt − Lt,TL − Lr,TL − L atm − Lion

(6)
It is important to understand the various power terms that occur in this
equation. Pt is the transmitted power, and Lt,TL is the loss from the trans-
mitter to the transmitting antenna (this loss arises in the connecting cable,
called transmission line, therefore the abbreviation TL). Likewise, Pr is the
received power and Lr,TL the passive losses from the receiver antenna to
the receiver. Gt (θt , φt ) is the gain of the of the transmitter antenna in the
direction (θt , φt ) of the receiver antenna (in the coordinate system of the
transmitter antenna). Likewise, Gr (θr , φr ) is the gain of the receiver an-
tenna in the direction of the transmitter antenna.

Moreover, it is reasonable to assume that the antennas are slightly mis-

aligned, which manifests itself as deviations in the (θt , φt )-angles for the
respective antennas. One cannot know what these deviations will be, only
that they will be within some bounds. It is assumed that the antennas at
the ground station can be controlled to be within 10o of the intended direc-
tion (in other words, a ground station pointing accuracy of 10 degrees is
assumed) and the satellites attitude in space is accurate up to 10o as well.
Since these deviations will change the gain, it is common to introduce the
pointing loss Lt,pnt and Lr,pnt as the worst-case reduction in gain that may
happen within these bounds.

The Free-Space Path Loss (FSPL) is the loss in power as the signal trav-
els a distance r. It is directly proportional to the square of frequency. In
decibels, this quantity is given by:

4πr
FSPL(r ) = 20log( ) (7)
λ

L atm and Lion represent the attenuation in the received signal strength
because of attenuation due to atmospheric gases and the ionosphere, re-
spectively. L atm is dependent on elevation angle El, whereas Lion is depen-
dent upon frequency.

Finally comes the polarization loss which is represented by the PLF. If

an incoming wave has a different polarization than the receiving antenna,
only some of the power flux which the receiving antenna intercepts will be
available for reception.

17
 The received noise is given by:

N = kTs B (8)

where k is the Boltzmann’s constant (k = 1.38 × 10− 23 W/Hz/K = −228.6dBW/Hz/K )

and B is the noise bandwidth of the receiver. Ts is then the equivalent sys-
tem noise temperature, which is the physical temperature a matched resis-
tor at the input should have in order to produce the same amount of noise
as all the contributions together. Ts consists of contributions from the ther-
mal noise of the receiver itself, the antenna, and the passive components
in between. In addition, there is a contribution from the noise the antenna
intercepts due to noise that is radiated by all of its surroundings (c.f. bright-
ness temperature and black-body radiation).

What is dB and why dB system?

The decibel (dB) is a logarithmic
unit used to express the ratio of
two values of the same physical
property.
Power quantities:
Power level L p = 10log10 ( PPo )
Amplitude (Voltage/Current) quanti-
ties
Gain G p = 20log10 ( PPo )
If we want to express the absolute
value of a property in dB, we ex-
press it with respect to standard
values like 1W, 1mW, 1V in the de-
nominator in place of Po or Ao in
above expressions.
For example, P (dBm) = 10*log10
(P (in mW)/ 1mW) Ask yourself :
How do you convert dBm to dB?

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4 Paper and YouTube Links
Antenna Theory Basics
Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC)
Design of communication system for cubeSTAR nanosatellite
Antenna system for NUTS nanosatellite
If youtube videos suit you:
Richard Wenner’s YouTube video on Link Budget
David Casler’s YouTube series on antennas

For any corrections, doubts or suggestions, contact:

Nishant Gupta f20160426@pilani.bits-pilani.ac.in

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