LEISA: CubeSat for Ionospheric Characterization
Abstract
The University of New Mexico / Configurable Space Microsystems Innovation and Applications Center (COSMIAC) is designing a highly affordable research satellite called LEISA (Low Earth Ionospheric Spectrum Analyzer) to characterize Ionospheric properties that affect electromagnetic wave propagation. By measuring spectral distortion of both natural and man-made impulses LEISA will measure Total Electron Content (TEC), magnetic field strength, refractive effects, plasma properties, and higher-order electron density profile effects. Additionally, LEISA may shed light on the relationships between lightning effects and thunderstorm weather in the troposphere and the potential relationship between the acoustic/seismic events around thunderstorms and Ionospheric weather. The LEISA design effort has led to a number of innovations that may be relevant to other small science spacecraft. The design is particularly challenging because of the need to implement broadband RF reception from 20-200 MHz as well as to capture and process the resulting signals within a 1u spacecraft (10cm x 10cm x 10cm) with less than 2 watts of average available power. One particular challenge is the deployable electrically small biconic wideband UHF antenna that deploys to approximately 1.5m in length and .5 m in width. The resulting antenna system deploys from a diminutive 500 cubic centimeter volume. The remaining electronics must fit within the remaining 500 cubic centimeters, leading the team to develop a system-on-a-chip (SoC) design using a Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA. The resulting circuit handles the spectrogram capture as well as all command and data handling functions within an average power footprint of approximately 200mW, reserving energy for analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) during capture events. LEISA builds upon prior work by Los Alamos National Laboratory with FORTE and Cibola Flight Experiment. In addition to being much more affordable, LEISA offers the potential of geo-locating events to within approximately 1km, which is useful for inverting the key scientific findings from collected data. The project provides rich research opportunities for undergraduates including FPGA design, deployable systems, RF design, data analysis, antenna design, digital signal processing, filter design, power reduction techniques, and networking and communications.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFMSA13B2180S
- Keywords:
-
- 0594 COMPUTATIONAL GEOPHYSICS / Instruments and techniques;
- 2411 IONOSPHERE / Electric fields;
- 2494 IONOSPHERE / Instruments and techniques;
- 7944 SPACE WEATHER / Ionospheric effects on radio waves