Link Budget Digital Format Conversion
Development and impact analysis of a LBDF Conversion Tool for Link Budget Analysis: Application to ARRAKIHS
A.M.N. Van Der Steichel (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
S. Speretta – Mentor (TU Delft - Space Systems Egineering)
L.L.A. Vermeersen – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Physical and Space Geodesy)
E.J.O. Schrama – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Astrodynamics & Space Missions)
Dominique Jau – Mentor
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Abstract
Several satellite engineering domains already adopt a standardised digital format, however the communication subsystem still uses and outdated approach, namely link budget tables. Because of this, the concept of the Link Budget Data Format (LBDF) is introduced which is a standardised, digital format to share link budget data. This thesis presents a conversion tool to convert the satellite link budget data from Redwire Space’s calculation tool to the LBDF standard. The impact of this approach is studied by taking interviews of both Redwire Space and European Space Agency (ESA) employees. These interviews show that the LBDF tool has a great impact on the time consumption of the data exchange and verification process, the error reduction due to the elimination of the manual copy-paste process and finally, cost savings. On top of this, the newly created tool provides opportunities within the company to automate their own processes such as the verification and optimisation of the link budget. A new verification tool shows a fully verified link budget of the Analysis of Resolved Remnants of Accreted galaxies as a Key Instrument for Halo Surveys (ARRAKIHS) mission, while a new optimisation tool calculates the maximum achievable data rate for different modulation and coding schemes considered for the ARRAKIHS mission. The theoretical optimal solution deemed to be 8 Phase Shift Keying (PSK) modulation with concatenated coding of Reed-Solomon and convolutional coding. Both tools use the new LBDF file as input and greatly improve the speed of these processes.