A telemetry communication system for ucubesat

The goal of U CubeSat club at the University of Utah is to launch the University of Utah's first CubeSat into space, and thus inspire future engineering students at the U to develop and launch increasingly capable CubeSats. My contributions to this project was to determine the requirements for maintaining a wireless communication system for the UCubeSat. Achieving this objective required multiple link budget analysis for links in the S band and UHF frequency bands. The RF simulation program CST was used to analyze the behavior of different antennas in the S band and UHF frequency bands. Through the results of these analyses and research, it was determined that the frequency of 436.4 MHz would be the most optimal frequency for the link between the UCubeSat and ground station. A pair of dipoles on the UCubeSat and a Yagi Uda on the ground station will also be able to provide sufficient gain to receive a signal with a bit rate of 20kB/s. These results will be a useful guide to determining the required Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) hardware for a 1U (10 cubic centimeter) CubeSat.