The Design of the Communication and Telemetry System Used by the Ionospheric Observation Nanosatellite Formation Mission

This document describes the approach taken by the Ionospheric Observation Nanosatellite Formation (ION-F) communication team in designing and devel-oping a ground communication system, space commu-nication system, and amateur communication system for three satellites in the ION-F constellation. It out-lines the mission objectives, the system requirements, the theory of operation, hardware, software, commu-nication protocols; including equipment specifications and other major aspects of the system. An impor-tant feature of the communication system is the ex-tensive use of commercial off the shelf (COTS) compo-nents, which has lowered cost and shortened develop-ment time. This system will be adopted by all three universities. Figure 1: ION-F Formation Key words: satellite, space communication, nanosatellite, ionosphere, space systems, inter-satellite communications, telemetry, ground station, uplink, downlink, crosslink, satellite antenna, transmitter, re-ceiver, transceiver, beacon, amateur radio, Ham radio, GPS, terminal node controller, TNC, real-time data, link budget, PCM page.