Design of a hybrid receiver for the Olympus spacecraft beacons

The design of a hybrid analog/digital receiver developed to acquire and monitor the Olympus satellite beacons is presented. The analog portion of this receiver uses a frequency-locked loop for signal tracking. A digital sampling detector operating at IF (intermediate frequency) is used to obtain the I and Q outputs. The digital signal processing techniques used in this detector do not suffer from drift and offset problems. The detector is implemented with a dedicated microprocessor system.<>