Date of Award

5-2016

Degree Type

Report

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Committee Chair(s)

Jacob Gunther

Committee

Jacob Gunther

Committee

Todd Moon

Committee

Charles Swenson

Abstract

Small satellites are becoming a popular spacecraft option because of their low cost, and complexity. Past small satellites had simple communication systems with low data rates that rarely exceeded 38.4 kbps. Engineers, researchers, and students, from Space Dynamics Laboratory and Utah State University, have recently created and launched a pair of small satellites called the Dynamic Ionosphere CubeSat Experiment (DICE). This mission was revolutionary because of its high-speed data link, with data rates up to 1.5 Mbps.

Due to the high-speed data link, it was necessary to create a ground station capable of receiving and processing the received data. For the DICE mission the ground station developed was not capable of receiving and processing the data in real-time. Because the current ground station was not capable of running in real-time it became necessary to develop a real-time solution. The real-time ground station receiver is a hardware solution, that implements signal processing algorithms in an FPGA in real-time. This report describes the theory, design, simulation, implementation, and testing of the sampling rate conversion portion of the system, as well as, other work that can be done to complete the real-time ground station receiver.

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