BIRDS-2: A Constellation of Joint Global Multi-Nation 1U CubeSats

Azami, M. H.; Partners, Birds; Maeda, G.; Faure, Pauline; Yamauchi, Takashi; Kim, S.; Masui, Hirokazu; Cho, Mengu

doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1152/1/012008

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…It must be noted that there are no intersatellite communications between the CubeSats of the constellation. The only communication links are with the 10 ground stations which are distributed over 10 different countries [63]. BIRDS-2 used the same modulation scheme (GMSK) and data rate (9.6 kbps) as BIRDS-1 for both uplink and downlink [63].…”

Section: Custom Hardware Designsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The only communication links are with the 10 ground stations which are distributed over 10 different countries [63]. BIRDS-2 used the same modulation scheme (GMSK) and data rate (9.6 kbps) as BIRDS-1 for both uplink and downlink [63]. However, BIRDS-2 used deployable monopole antennas, whose design is described in detail in [64], instead of the patch antenna used in BIRDS-1 [63].…”

Section: Custom Hardware Designsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…BIRDS-2 used the same modulation scheme (GMSK) and data rate (9.6 kbps) as BIRDS-1 for both uplink and downlink [63]. However, BIRDS-2 used deployable monopole antennas, whose design is described in detail in [64], instead of the patch antenna used in BIRDS-1 [63]. This transition to monopole antennas was made because the gain provided by the patch antennas was insufficient [62].…”

Section: Custom Hardware Designsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A Critical Review of Baseband Architectures for CubeSats’ Communication Systems

Zeedan¹,

Khattab²

2022

Preprint

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This survey 1 fills in an important gap in the literature on CubeSat communication systems’ designs and architectures. The paper 2 comprehensively reviews the design details in-depth and 3 critically evaluates the performance and reliability of the reviewed systems by analyzing the demonstration and testing results and illustrating implicit assumptions in the reviewed works. Furthermore, the paper 4 proposes an original CubeSat communication system categorization based on the design approach and 5 analyzes the features and limitations of each category. Consequently, this leads to identifying the limitations of current CubeSat communication systems and the promising future developments that can boost CubeSat communications capabilities.

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Section: Custom Hardware Designsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Custom Hardware Designsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Custom Hardware Designsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Critical Review of Baseband Architectures for CubeSats’ Communication Systems

Zeedan¹,

Khattab²

2022

Preprint

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“…This study will focus on the results of the KITSUNE FM TVT. The aim was to verify the functionality of the payload from the uplink execution command to downlink image data in two cycles Frontiers in Space Technologies frontiersin.org between −15.0 and +60.0 °C, according to the BIRDS project test (Azami et al, 2019;Kim et al, 2021) and ISO 19683 Space systems-design qualification and acceptance tests of small spacecraft and units. The CubeSat was precisely placed inside the thermal chamber, and a collimator lens was straight levelled at the outer chamber, pointing towards the target lens through the chamber window, as illustrated in Figure 7.…”

Section: Thermal Vacuum Testmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and environmental testing of imaging payload for a 6 U CubeSat at low Earth orbit: KITSUNE mission

Azami

Örger²,

Schulz³

et al. 2022

Front. Space Technol.

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Earth observation (EO) missions remain a challenging task for small satellite platforms due to their demanding requirements and space environment effects. In this study, the camera payload development and mission requirements are presented together with the ground-based testing results for a 6U CubeSat called KITSUNE, operating at low Earth orbit. The major challenge of the payload development is maintaining the focus of the optical system despite the thermal vacuum environment in orbit since the low thermal capacity and rapid temperature variation of CubeSats hinder the camera focus. First, the payload is developed with an objective of a 5-m-class imaging mission, which has a 31.4 MP CMOS sensor and a lens with a 300-mm focal length. Second, polyimide heaters and multilayer insulators are utilized in order to maintain focus during imaging operations. Third, a collimator lens is used to aid in image capture during thermal vacuum tests. These images are analyzed thoroughly using various focus measure operators. The Diagonal Laplacian was found to be the most suitable operator due to the consistency in test results. The results also showed that the heat generated by the camera sensor significantly affects the lens temperature and, ultimately, the target temperature of the lens was defined at −1.8°C. Finally, the test results are discussed, including thermal vacuum, vibration, total ionization dose, and the effect of exposure to direct sunlight on the CMOS sensor.

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“…Birds-2 Nanosatellite 1 kg (1U) UHF 0.8 W 9.6 kbps [6] SNUSAT-1b Nanosatellite 1.9 kg (2U) UHF 0.5 W 1.2 kbps [7] nSight-1 Nanosatellite 5 kg (2U) UHF -9.6 kbps [8] GeneSat-1 Nanosatellite 3.5 kg S-band -83 kbps [9] OPS-SAT Nanosatellite 5.4 kg (3U) S-band -1 Mbps [10] CanX-3/4/ Hodoyoshi-4 Small satellite 64 kg X-band 2 W 350 Mbps [19] DubaiSat-2 Small satellite 300 kg X-band -160 Mbps [20] Sentinel-3 Large satellite 1150 kg X-band -520 Mbps [21] Landsat-8 Large satellite 2623 kg X-band 50 W 384 Mbps [22] In the case of remote sensing applications over regions with high cloud fraction, the downlink limitation of nanosatellites becomes a larger problem when it comes to retrieving clear images if only a few images can be downloaded. According to a previous study [23], approximately 67% of the land is covered with clouds, and local regions with high cloud fraction exceeding 80% exist.…”

Section: Rf Information Reference Band Rf Power Throughputmentioning

confidence: 99%

RGB Image Prioritization Using Convolutional Neural Network on a Microprocessor for Nanosatellites

et al. 2020

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Nanosatellites are being widely used in various missions, including remote sensing applications. However, the difficulty lies in mission operation due to downlink speed limitation in nanosatellites. Considering the global cloud fraction of 67%, retrieving clear images through the limited downlink capacity becomes a larger issue. In order to solve this problem, we propose an image prioritization method based on cloud coverage using CNN. The CNN is designed to be lightweight and to be able to prioritize RGB images for nanosatellite application. As previous CNNs are too heavy for onboard processing, new strategies are introduced to lighten the network. The input size is reduced, and patch decomposition is implemented for reduced memory usage. Replication padding is applied on the first block to suppress border ambiguity in the patches. The depth of the network is reduced for small input size adaptation, and the number of kernels is reduced to decrease the total number of parameters. Lastly, a multi-stream architecture is implemented to suppress the network from optimizing on color features. As a result, the number of parameters was reduced down to 0.4%, and the inference time was reduced down to 4.3% of the original network while maintaining approximately 70% precision. We expect that the proposed method will enhance the downlink capability of clear images in nanosatellites by 112%.

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BIRDS-2: A Constellation of Joint Global Multi-Nation 1U CubeSats

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

A Critical Review of Baseband Architectures for CubeSats’ Communication Systems

A Critical Review of Baseband Architectures for CubeSats’ Communication Systems

Design and environmental testing of imaging payload for a 6 U CubeSat at low Earth orbit: KITSUNE mission

RGB Image Prioritization Using Convolutional Neural Network on a Microprocessor for Nanosatellites

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