CubeSat: Low Cost Communication Satellite

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Satellites play a decisive role for establishing communication network; these satellites are expensive, large in size and take a number of years to build up. To keep the cost low, small satellites such as the CubeSat, have big reward over their larger counterparts. Small satellites are located in LEO (low-earth orbit) in the range of 200-2,000 km; the speed of small satellites in LEO (relative to Earth’s surface) is around 7.5km/s, which is an orbital period of approximately 90 minutes. The definition of CubeSat comes from shape and weight of satellite, it belongs to the family of small satellite classification (Picosatellite <1kg, Nanosatellite 1-10kg, and Microsatellite 10-100kg).  

Small satellites cost much less per unit, many CubeSat can be fabricated for the price of one Satellite. The pros of CubeSats are lower cost but cons are that the required hardware of a large satellite cannot fit in the small shoe box such as CubeSats. The advantage is if one of these CubeSat in the network someway fails, the network can be reconfigured to pick up the slack. But in the case of larger satellites, if something goes wrong, the entire mission is at risk of failure because of single fallout.

The basic subsystems that make up the internals of a CubeSat are the telemetry, tracking and control (TTC), power generation and distribution (PGD), data command and handling (DCH), altitude determination and control (ADC), and the payload. The commercially available technology is unable to cope with the increasing demand in lower profile and high performance electronic devices for small Satellite applications that can replace the task of large Satellite because of size constraint. In this talk, pros and cons, applications and design challenges of Cube Sat is discussed.

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4:PM-6:00PM: Talk You don't have to be IEEE member to attend the talk.

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