Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine May 2018 - 64

Flexible CubeSat-Based System for Data Broadcasting

Figure 7.

D-SAT ground footprint.

activate the alert message encapsulation process (MAMES
Messages generation) has worked properly and the Satellite
MCC has been able to upload the generated messages.
C

D-SAT on board processing and broadcasting. The D-SAT
on board processing has allowed the priority and time validity checks making the SAE and ISAE act properly. The
ALERT and UltraShort uploaded messages have been
broadcasted based on their priority and time validity, while
the CANCEL messages have allowed the on-board queue
erase, if referring to the on-board stored message.
SDR portable receiver. The low-complexity satellite SDRbased receiver has been able to correctly receive the MAMES messages directly by the D-SAT and decode them. The
alert messages encapsulated into the MAMES payload have
been successfully extracted. Both plain text and CAP alert
messages have been tested.

The SatAlert experimental activity involved also European
ham radio community that actively participated in the reception
and extraction of the MAMES message transmitted by D-SAT, by
using their own SDR receiver.

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
A flexible CubeSat-based system for data broadcasting has been
proposed with the aim to meet the requirements of the advanced
64

and multidisciplinary services, which relies on the integration of
sensing, navigation, and communication capabilities. The highlevel design of the system architecture is provided together with
some of potential application contexts which could benefit from
the use CubeSat (Health and well-being; Smart, green and integrated transport; Security and emergency). Moreover, the applicability of the proposed system to an Emergency scenario has been
shown and the experimental activity carried out in the framework
of the D-SAT Mission has been presented as a proof of concept
of the developed Alert Messaging System. The whole chain from
the alert message issue to the alert reception has been tested and
validated, considering: i) the alert message encapsulation process
and the interfaces among the involved entities, on the transmission side; ii) the D-SAT on board processing and the consecutive
broadcasting of MAMES messages; iii) the reception of them by a
low complexity portable satellite receiver. The success of the SatAlert Experiment of the D-SAT Mission is presented through the
analysis of the obtained results, demonstrating the effectiveness
of the proposed system. All the building blocks, including the onboard software that parses and broadcasts the MAMES messages,
worked according to the specifications, proving the feasibility of
both the transmission over the space segment (LEO satellite) of
alert messages encapsulated into MAMES protocol messages and
their reception and decoding by a portable SDR UT.
Among the future developments of this activity, it is worth
highlighting the definition of the suitable SmallSat constellations,
which will permit a full deployment of the considered services by

IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE

MAY - JUNE 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine May 2018