Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine May 2018 - 56

Feature Article:

DOI. No. 10.1109/MAES.2018.170115

Flexible CubeSat-Based System for Data Broadcasting
S. Jayousi, S. Morosi, University of Florence, Italy
L. S. Ronga, Leonardo, Security and Information Systems, Campi Bisenzio, Italy
E. Del Re, University of Florence, Italy
A. Fanfani, L. Rossettini, D-Orbit srl, Milano, Italy

INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION
Effective answers to the major problems in society can be achieved
by resorting to the integration of telecommunication platforms,
heterogeneous systems of localization, and sensing capabilities
and intelligent objects [1]. Particularly, the pursuit of long term
technological solutions has to be made with the support of a revolutionary multidisciplinary approach, especially in the areas of
transport, smart environments, quality of life, security, etc.
As a result, new and more intelligent services will become
available, allowing the realization of smart contexts for what
concerns home, building, cities, work-places, and implementing
new concepts as ambient intelligence, ambient assistant living,
ubiquitous computing, context awareness, and many more. This
pervasive communication ecosystem will solve many, if not most,
problems in our life, by increasing security and safety perception
and improving interaction and conditions of activities; information
and communications technologies will be a pillar of this society
evolution by providing a complex net of information exchanges
and exploiting the big data that are involved in the procedures [2].
Moreover, the satellite segment will contribute significantly to
the evolution of the services by means of the synergistic use of
communication, positioning, and monitoring techniques: this objective will be realized by means of meshed heterogeneous architectures [2] that can afford remarkable systems and networks performance. At the same time, some of the envisaged future services
such as the global tracking, monitoring, and maintaining of some
specific assets or contexts don't mandatorily request the implementation of classic wireless or satellite communication systems

Authors' current addresses: S. Jayousi, S. Morosi, E. Del Re,
University of Florence, Information Engineering Department,
Via di S. Marta, 3 Florence, I-50139 Italy; L. S. Ronga, Leonardo-Security and Information Systems, Via Albert Einstein 35,
Campi Bisenzio, 50013, Italy; A. Fanfani, L. Rossettini, D-Orbit
srl, Via Giuseppe Mazzini 2, 20123 Milano (MI), Italy.
Manuscript received June 7, 2017, revised November 5, 2017,
December 19, 2017, and ready for publication December 23,
2017.
Review handled by L. Ligthart.
0885/8985/18/$26.00 © 2018 IEEE
56

which are subject to coverage and cost limitations; conversely,
the uprising Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things
paradigms seem to be more appropriate in such scenarios where
a global packet connectivity has to be afforded in order to permit
the exchange of information between the network and the ultimate
users but the requirements in terms of data-rate and latency are not
stringent [3], [4].
On the other hand, this strategy can be successful if some operating conditions and key factors can be granted; particularly, the
following conditions are compelling:
C

this strategy has to be general, i.e., a very large set of future
services has to rely on it, even if their requirements are rather
diversified and even divergent;
the communications, both within the system and between
the system and the external world, will have to be highly
efficient and to deliver all the necessary information in due
time, where needed, with required quality of service (QoS)
and energy consumption.

Among the systems which allow the achievement of both of
these goals, the new class of "SmallSats" also affords the reduction
of the implementation costs and the increase of system availability
because of their recent exponential growth [5], [6], [7]. As a result,
the exploitation of SmallSats solutions, such as the CubeSat, as
a basic element of the problem-solving infrastructures has been
envisaged.
Thanks to CubeSat standardization, low cost of commercial
off-the-shelf (COTS) electronics and new launch opportunities,
constellations of SmallSats that are able to provide a realistic
worldwide coverage represent a promising solution for the provision of different communication services. Some examples are: the
AAUSAT3 mission for the validation of an Software Defined Radio (SDR) automatic identification system (AIS) signals receiver
for CubeSat [8]; the Outernet projects for broadcasting free content
retrieved from the web through satellites [9]; Astrocast project for
offering global M2M services as remote monitoring, geolocalization, intelligent data collection, and predictive maintenance [10].
Moreover, the heterogeneity of the potential application scenarios, and therefore the flexibility needed on the receiver side,
makes the SDR technology [11] suitable for the quick adaptation
of the receiver to different physical layers, maximizing the opportunity to disseminate multiple information messages all over the
world [12].

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