Radio Link Design for CubeSat-to-Ground Station Communications Using An Experimental License

CubeSats have attracted increased interest from the academic community in recent years due to their relative low cost and rapid development cycle. As is the case with all autonomous spacecraft, CubeSats rely on radio communications with ground stations to receive commands for performing scientific missions, and to transmit telemetry and measurement data back to Earth for processing. This paper discusses the radio link design for the Old Dominion University (ODU) CubeSat communication system that is scheduled to be launched in 2019 as part of the Virginia CubeSat Constellation (VCC) project. The presentation includes an overview of the system and the RF link budget analysis, along with salient design aspects including impedance matching for the CubeSat radio, a custom interface for the ground station radio, and an outline of the link layer protocol used.