Design of a Real-Time Tracking and Telemetry Parsing System for S-band Satellites

The number of satellites being launched every year is increasing, with several academic institutes too taking part in designing satellites and payloads for satellites. A ground station is needed to receive and transmit signals, to and from satellites. The uplink data from ground station to satellite is mostly Telecommand and the downlink data is either Telemetry or Payload. Telemetry data provides information related to the health and essential parameters of the satellite with Payload data focusing on the data related to major application of the satellite. In this paper, an attempt is made to design an inhouse real-time tracking and telemetry parsing system for an S-band satellite named SindhuNetra, designed by PES University, along with RCI-DRDO and launched by ISRO. The proposed work is carried out using a ground station with Sband antenna commissioned at PES University and Software Defined Radio module. A graphical user interface is also developed using Python scripts and other open source software to monitor the telemetry data in real-time. Three models are explored for the proposed work with the maximum Figure of Merit (FOM) obtained being 0.996 with an average FOM of 0.92. The proposed work will benefit academic institutes launching satellites to track and monitor their satellite using proposed ground station.