A Low-Cost Portable and Agile Amateur Satellites Ground-Station

CubeSats and small satellites are gaining significant momentum for a wide range of applications. This paper discusses the design of a low-cost portable ground-station with a focus on the automated antenna positioner, the radio frequency front-end, and the software defined radio block. The experimental results demonstrate the ability of the antenna positioner to track the satellite azimuth and elevation angles with high accuracy. Furthermore, the software defined radio receiver was tested using a CubeSat prototype used to emulate the signal received by a deployed satellite. The received data was successfully decoded, and the information sent from the satellite recovered. The designed ground-station cost was kept below US$1,000.