Flexible electrical power system controller design and battery integration for 1U to 12U CubeSats

The paper presents the power distribution system architecture, hardware and software design and specifications of the electrical power system (EPS) for CubeSats. The sources of power in these CubeSats are solar panels on each of their six faces. The maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques are used to maximize the output of power from these solar panels. The EPS also has two Li-ion batteries mounted on it, the capacity of the batteries depend on the size and configuration of the CubeSat. The EPS has three flexible battery charging modules (FBCM) to charge the battery and seven independent flexible digital point of load (FDPOL) converters to drive the loads. The digital control is provided by TI TMS320F28335 DSP which runs the MPPT algorithms, takes feedback from the loads, runs the battery State of Health (SOH) and State of Charge (SOC) determination algorithms and determines state of health of the EPS.