FUNcube
FUNcube is an 1-Unit educational CubeSat Satellite, built by AMSAT-UK in cooperation with AMSAT-NL and ISIS in Delft. As AMSAT-UK member, I became involved in the project early on, due to my background designing and building parts of Delfi-C3. I took on the challenge of designing the FUNcube RF board, the ASIB and many of the harnessing and interfacing.
RF board
The FUNcube RF board is designed to be similar with the Flight-proven Delfi-C3 radios. A lot of design choices for Delfi-C3 have been used. The design uses a triple conversion receiver, and a single conversion transmitter. The transponder IF is tapped after the second receiver downconversion step and is converted to the TX frequency in one upconversion step.
The RF board provides the following functionalities:
- Receive and demodulate FM uplink signals and provide the FM baseband signal to the CCT board
- Generate the BPSK modulated RF dowlink signal using baseband signals from the CCT board
- Implement linear transponder functionality
- Provide health and performance telemetry to the CCT board over the I2C bus
- Provide power switching
Mechanical interface
The RF board is designed to be used in the CubeSat standard form factor type of satellites. For interconnection and mechanical interfacing, FUNcube uses the popular CubeSatKit standard. This standard dictates the size and location of four holes for mechanical fixing. Also, a 2.54mm pitch stack-through connector is specified for inter-board signals. This connector is also located at a standard location. FUNcube uses a slightly modified lay-out, but the holes and connectors remain at their positions.
More to follow....
Last modification on: 23 Feb 2016. File: funcube/index.php