The Flexible Microwave Payload-2: A SDR-Based GNSS-Reflectometer and L-Band Radiometer for CubeSats

IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing

Adriano Camps¹  Joan Francesc Munoz-Martin²  Lara Fernandez Capon³  Joan Adria Ruiz-de-Azua⁴ 

[1] BarcelonaTech, and IEEC/CTE-UPC, Barcelona, Spain;Department of Signal Theory and Communications, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Unidad de Excellencia Mar&x00ED;a de Maeztu - CommSensLab, and Universitat Polit&x00E8;cnica de Catalunya &x2013;

关键词: Cubesats;    GNSS-R;    $L$ -band;    radiometry;    RFI;    sea ice;   

DOI  :  10.1109/JSTARS.2020.2977959

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

This article presents the FMPL-2 on board the FSSCat mission, the 2017 ESA Small Sentinel Satellite Challenge and overall Copernicus Masters Competition winner. FMPL-2 is a passive microwave instrument based on a software-defined radio that implements a conventional global navigation satellite system-Reflectometer and an L-band radiometer, occupying 1 U of a 6 U CubeSat. The article describes the FSSC at mission context, the payload design and implementation phases, the tests results in a controlled environment, and finally the calibration algorithms applied to the downloaded data in order to extract the appropriate geophysical parameters: sea-ice coverage, sea-ice thickness (SIT), and low-resolution soil moisture. This article covers the overall payload design, from a high-level block diagram down to single-component specifications from both hardware and software points of view. The main block of the instrument is based on the combination of an FPGA, which virtualizes a dual-core ARM processor, where most of the calculus are performed, and a software-defined radio module, in charge of I/Q data demodulation. The article also explains the design and implementation of a signal conditioning board required for the correct operation and calibration of both instruments.

【 授权许可】

Unknown