Small satellite ground station in Pilsen — experiences with VZLUSAT-1 commanding and future modifications toward open reference ground station solution

Conventional solution of the ground station for CubeSat commanding during low Earth orbit mission is based on radio amateur equipment and could be implemented quickly and with low cost. Such case is also our ground station in Pilsen, currently used for VZLUSAT-1 daily commanding. However this solution also contains several bottlenecks, as we gained experience during VZLUSAT-1 commanding after collective launch of 31 satellites in PSLV-C38 carrier. In this paper several practical experiences with radio commanding of CubeSat class satellite are described, especially limitations of conventional solutions of the ground station and several aspects of collective launch of small satellites. Based on our experiences we are preparing a concept of more universal and scalable ground station, usable for different satellites and with the capability of linking into the network of cooperated ground stations, while keeping low cost and usage of currently common equipment like software defined radio.