Performance Simulation of a LoRa Low Power WAN CubeSat in Earth Observation Missions

Abstract

Until the last two decades a few superpower countries were the custodian of space exploration by means of satellites. Colossal budgets and expertise required to build and launch a satellite were the major limiting factor. With research making possible space exploration through small satellites, academic institutions boarded the space benchmarking products used in Low Earth Orbits (LEOs) missions. The setup of a satellite system comprising a space segment in a satellite and a ground segment in a transceiver requires the operation frequency band allocation by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The acquisition of this frequency band involves administrative procedures and the band license fee, which present a challenge to the seamless space exploration for academic purposes. The ground-breaking technology of Tiny Ground Station (TinyGS), which is an open source global satellite network operating with Long Range (LoRa) wireless communication and Internet of Things (IoT) could see the financial and administration hurdles relieved, thus making access to space science by academic institutions. This paper anticipates the performance analysis of a LoRa-Wide Area Network-based cube satellite (cubeSat) under development at a French South African Institute of Technology (FSATI) under the hospices of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). The work presented consists of a simulation of two complementary cubeSats orbiting the earth and sending information to a quarter wavelength monopole antenna through a TinyGS. The results relating to the communication between the cubeSats and the antenna were promising, guaranteeing the implementation of the actual cubeSat system.