Thermal Validation Testing of an Automatic Identification System (AIS) Receiver for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) CubeSat

Abstract

The advancements in electronics technology make nanosatellite missions more varied. One of its missions is to retrieve Automatic Identification System (AIS) data from vessels on the ground. The type of nanosatellite made in this study is a CubeSat with a size of 1.5U. The AIS receiver is created using RFIC Si4362 and MSP430G2553 Microcontrollers to control the device. The main mission of AIS Receivers is to receive and decode AIS signals at the frequency of 161.975 MHz and 162.025 MHz into the AIVDM NMEA0183 standard format. The decoded AIS data is sent to a Raspberry Pi Compute Module as On-Board Data Handling (OBDH) CubeSat before it is sent to the ground station. All of the CubeSat’s subsystems must be able to pass thermal testing before being launched into orbit. Thermal testing is performed to observe the performance of subsystems in extreme conditions similar to CubeSat conditions in space. Thermal testing is carried out at the Satellite Technology Center (Pusteksat) of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (LAPAN) facility. The thermal test is done by running the device at temperatures of -20°C - 60°C for 3 hours and 56 minutes. The thermal testing indicates that the AIS Receiver can work in the orbital temperature range. After testing, the data reception success rate is 36.76% with a minimum RSSI value of -96dBm.