Link Budgets

Version 3 (J. Simmons, 05/15/2016 12:03 pm) → Version 4/11 (J. Simmons, 05/15/2016 12:15 pm)

h1. Link Budget References

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h2. Background Material

* "Link Budget Calculation":http://www.piscespacific.org/livesite/files/Link_Budget_Calculation.pdf
* "Tutorial on Basic Link Budget Analysis":http://www.sss-mag.com/pdf/an9804.pdf

h2. Example Calculations

Much of this material was reviewed with the stakeholders and the IPT at the "Sprint 1 Stand Up 3 meeting":https://docs.google.com/document/d/17Wc4sMqlUissR5am6ANDcKP-psRQ41ysxOV0vrcgHJA/pub

* Online Forms - useful for one off calculations, source code/math not necessarily available to Mach 30
** "Satellite Link Budget Calculator":http://www.satsig.net/linkbugt.htm - simple online form for uplink and downlink calculations
** "Satellite Link Budget Calculator page":http://www.tutorialsweb.com/satcom/satellite-link-budget-calculator.htm - a mor complete set of calculations for uplink and downlink
** "Geostationary Satellite Link Budget Calculations (Downlink)":http://www.satcom-services.com/VSAT/downlink.html - Geo calculations, not really useful for us, but nice user experience
* Spreadsheets - require correct software to run, but Mach 30 can investigate the implementation to use as a source for porting to Python library
**
"KickSat Ground Station Link Budget":https://github.com/kicksat/groundstation/blob/master/Link%20Budgets.xlsx (MS Excel)
** * "Jan King's AMSAT link budget +extensive+":http://www.amsatuk.me.uk/iaru/AMSAT-IARU_Link_Model_Rev2.5.3.xls (MS Excel)

h2. Video Tutorials

These vidoes are proof of concept video tutorials, and will be replaced with a more polished version as time permits.
* "Link Budgets Part 1, Intro to Satellite Link Budgets":https://youtu.be/WLhLYSvHmNY
* "Link Budget part 2, Transmission Segment":https://youtu.be/x8Jsyc0CYLU
* "Link Budget part 3, Trigonometry Refresher":https://youtu.be/pexhLdsp9J0
* "Link Budget part 4, Propagation Loss":https://youtu.be/nFxdoXbmURw
* "Link Budget part 5, Ground Segment":
* "Link Budget part 6, Putting It All Together":
* "Link Budget part 7, Software Solutions":

h2. Selected Link Budget Source Document

The Ground Sphere Mk 3 team has decided to build its Python Link Budget library on the calculations used in the "KickSat Ground Station Link Budget":https://github.com/kicksat/groundstation/blob/master/Link%20Budgets.xlsx. This spreadsheet includes nearly all of the required transmission effects and has been verified by "comparing its results to manual calculations":http://opendesignengine.net/dmsf_files/523?download=.