Session

Poster Session 1

Location

Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, UT

Abstract

  • Student CubeSat missions using sub-$100 UHF radios are constrained by small packet sizes, making standard protocols (e.g., TCP, CFDP) too overhead-intensive for payload downlinks.  
  • We developed a Selective Negative Acknowledgement (SNACK)-based protocol for the Artemis CubeSat Kit bus to support reliable 160 × 120 LWIR thermal image transmission for the CubeSats for Climate Change Monitoring (C3M) mission  
  • A 45-byte SNACK bitmap acknowledges up to 360 packet fragments, minimizing retransmission overhead.  
  • Field tests from 5 m to 1.6 km achieved 72.2 kbps peak throughput and ≥98.7% final data integrity.

Document Type

Event

SSC26-P1-73 (1).pdf (15697 kB)

Available for download on Saturday, August 22, 2026

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Aug 23rd, 12:00 AM

SNACK Protocol for Reliable High-Throughput Data Transfer on MTU-Constrained Low-Cost UHF Radios

Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, UT

  • Student CubeSat missions using sub-$100 UHF radios are constrained by small packet sizes, making standard protocols (e.g., TCP, CFDP) too overhead-intensive for payload downlinks.  
  • We developed a Selective Negative Acknowledgement (SNACK)-based protocol for the Artemis CubeSat Kit bus to support reliable 160 × 120 LWIR thermal image transmission for the CubeSats for Climate Change Monitoring (C3M) mission  
  • A 45-byte SNACK bitmap acknowledges up to 360 packet fragments, minimizing retransmission overhead.  
  • Field tests from 5 m to 1.6 km achieved 72.2 kbps peak throughput and ≥98.7% final data integrity.