Characterization of On Board Data Handling (OBDH) Subsystem

Abstract

Nanosatellite technology is one type of satellite weighing less than 10 Kg. There are several advantages of nanosatellite technology, one of which is less cost than the conventional or geostationary satellite, so it can be develop by universities in university-scaled. Tel-USat is nanosatellite project developed by Telkom University for research purpose. Tel-USat mission carrying remote sensing payload with serial camera. One of the subsystems in nanosatellite is On Board Data Handling (OBDH) subsystem. The main task of OBDH subsystem design to control and monitoring the nanosatellite system as main controller. The OBDH subsystem determine the health system performance by monitoring nanosatellite housekeeping consist of several parameters such as temperature system, nanosatellite gyroscope orientation, and magnetic sensing. As main controller, OBDH subsystem also synchronizing between subsystems. It controls to take pictures of the camera from payload subsystem. The Tel-USat On Board Data Handling subsystem using 32-bit ARM Cortex М3 as main controller provides with three different sensors parameters for nanosatellite housekeeping. The payload subsystem carrying serial camera produces JPEG image with 640 × 480 pixels. The result of this research is OBDH of TelU-Sat with embedded STM32F103C8T6 microcontroller can operated as main controller to monitoring housekeeping data parameters and image payload control.