A Nanosatellite Mission for Ionospheric Disturbance Monitoring

A Nanosatellite Mission for Ionospheric Disturbance Monitoring: Mission Design and Payload Description

Biersteker, S.

Verhoeven, C.J.M. (mentor)

Aerospace Engineering

Space Systems Engineering

2016-05-18

Military operations have over the last years become more dependent on communication, navigation and intelligence through satellites. In order to expand space activities in the future and to make more informed decisions on space projects, it was decided that the Royal Netherlands Air Force will perform a pathfinder mission. This thesis investigates the options and return for such a pathfinder mission. From a variety of possible mission applications, ionospheric disturbance monitoring was selected. The mission addresses a current issue; signal fades of navigation and communication links in the hours after sunset. Plasma bubbles are causing signal distortion, which is called ionospheric scintillation. Scintillation is noticeable on GNSS signals, but is much more severe at lower frequencies such as UHF. On these lower frequencies, used by the military for satellite communication, scintillation can lead to signal disturbances or fades of up to 50 dB. Widely available GNSS signals can be used for detecting scintillation, but are only a good scintillation indicator for the 1.2 or 1.5 GHz frequency bands. Whether GNSS and UHF signals are distorted, and how severely this disturbance is, depends on the scale lengths inside the ionospheric irregularity. A nanosatellite provides an excellent platform for doing in situ ionospheric measurements and to determine these scale lengths. A combination of a sweeping Langmuir probe, a fixed bias Langmuir probe and an impedance probe was found to be able to provide the required plasma parameters. When the RNLAF chooses to select this mission concept, the variability of the ionosphere and the influence this has on the data return, should be taken into account. The probability of occurrence in a solar minimum year, such as 2018, is expected to be low. An orbit analysis model has shown that a 400 day mission can provide up to 0.68 ionospheric disturbance measurements per day on average. The gathered data will contribute to the characterization of ionospheric scintillation and provide the RNLAF with a means of correlating GNSS and UHF disturbances.

nanosatellite
ionosphere
scintillation
systems engineering

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:b9fa73fa-5cf7-451c-86ae-cc4df0eff3fb

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2016 Biersteker, S.