Link Budget References¶

Link Budget References

TODO: write a 1-2 sentence explanation of what a link budget is here, and a summary of what the purpose of this page is.

Background Material¶

Link Budget Calculation
Tutorial on Basic Link Budget Analysis
Link Budget Video Tutorials by Aaron Harper, Mach 30 volunteer

Example Calculations¶

Much of this material was reviewed with the stakeholders and the IPT at the Sprint 1 Stand Up 3 meeting

Online Forms¶

Online forms are useful for one off calculations, source code/math not necessarily available to Mach 30.

Satellite Link Budget Calculator - simple online form for uplink and downlink calculations
Satellite Link Budget Calculator page - a mor complete set of calculations for uplink and downlink
Geostationary Satellite Link Budget Calculations - Geo calculations, not really useful for us, but nice user experience

Spreadsheets¶

Spreadsheets require the correct software to run (typically MS Excel), but Mach 30 can investigate the implementation to use as a source for porting to Python library.

KickSat Ground Station Link Budget (MS Excel) - just about the right level of detail for current work (not surprising since KickSat has a similar level of technical complexity and available technical resources as Ground Sphere)
Jan King's AMSAT link budget (MS Excel) - the most extensive calculations, too much detail for now, but will likely be useful for future projects
KA9Q JJSat link budget design spreadsheet (MS Excel) - another set of right sized calculations for our current needs (came from conceptual design work for JJSat)
ConaSat Link Budget Calculations for DTUSat (MS Excel) - the history of this spreadsheet is a little unclear, but it is a very clean implementation of the required calculations

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. This spreadsheet includes nearly all of the required transmission effects and has been verified by comparing its results to manual calculations.