SmallSat Ground Systems, a C2 to RF Integrated Approach

Why is the industry embracing these Small Satellites? –Launch, integration & manufacturing costs are orders of magnitude less –Payloads can include communications, remote sensing, global internet… –Small satellites can provide resiliency –Small satellite fleets can provide near constant global coverage SmallSat market is growing and innovative –Startup companies funded by venture capital; lowered financial barriers to enter the market –New ideas and concepts are driving changes Getting Started with Small Satellites 2 What is a Small Satellite? –For the sake of this discussion, SmallSats are satellites with masses from 1kg to 500kg; includes cubesats as well

SmallSat Trends 3 Impacts to Traditional Ground Systems More Commercial focus for Systems SmallSats are not solely the domain of government programs; Ground systems keep up by embracing commercial business models (aka less customization, less NRE) Use of Standard Architectures Following the theme of less customization; the use of standards like AX.25, GEMS, CCSDS and XTCE help promote interoperability (not bad for big satellites either) Ground System as a Commodity Expectations have changed; SmallSats look at the ground system like a cell phone with similar expectations on performance. Greater VC investment VC investments have different motives; quick turnarounds on profitability. Speed (equates to schedule) is everything. Smaller budgets for SmallSats Smaller budgets mean less specifications, reduced systems engineering support, and promotes the use of COTS. Make vs. Buy Trades Many SmallSat programs found the traditional ground systems too expensive; they rolled their own instead.

A traditional ground system, or Telemetry, Tracking, and Commanding (TT&C) systems is used by operators to issue spacecraft commands and view Telemetry TT&C servers for managing spacecraft databases, monitoring SOH and generating vehicle commands FEPs for controlling command encryptors and parsing telemetry streams Network gateways used for deterministic wide area networks (WAN) transport Modulator/Demodulator systems for narrowband and wideband links Up/Down frequency conversion to the antennas and the antennas themselves Traditional Ground Systems 4 The traditional approach works well, but requires lots of equipment that must be integrated together!

Equipment has to go somewhere… If you are lucky, your ground system control center may look like this 5

Or if you are unlucky… 6

Small satellites need the same ground processing as large satellite programs Small satellite programs need cost effective solutions for their limited budgets Software based ground processing is a key enabler for small satellite systems Small Satellite Ground Systems 7 SmallSat are unique – Lower cost and shorter missions require GS solutions simple to install and operate, fit tight budgets, and meet aggressive schedules

Overcoming cost is the largest hurdle in the SmallSat ground system There are three main tenets in our approach towards reducing cost: 1.Reduce dependency on hardware By avoiding box solutions that require custom hardware and choosing software solutions the recurring cost of hardware is eliminated. To make this work, the SmallSat program design should be tailored to allow software systems to work. 2.Application of Virtualization Use Virtual Machines and Appliances instead of physical servers. Virtualization allows the software systems to run on high density computing environments and can even be hosted in third party cloud systems (e.g. Amazon’s EC2) 3.Avoid integration labor When was the last time you integrated the radio, OS, processor, and SSD on your cell phone? Probably it came to you that way! Engineers are expensive and we should have them focus on missions, payloads, and the business logic, not integrating another ground system. Standardized interfaces help here. Reducing Cost in the Ground System 8

quantumGND is our solution to the SmallSat ground system Solves the end to end RF to C2 needs of SmallSat missions as a suite of modular, low-cost, fully-functional capabilites – Full featured C2 met by quantumCMD Front End Processing met by qFEP Mod/Demod and up/down conversion met by qRadio – Pre-integrated and tested with S/C radio providers – Open standards and modular design – Provided as virtual appliances – Supports scalability to large fleets of SmallSats quantumGND; a complete C2 to RF Approach 9 quantumGND reflects the experience of supporting over 300 satellite missions over more than 20 years U.S. and international Commercial, civilian, and national security LEO, HEO, GEO, and Deep Space All mission types (science, weather, com) Single spacecraft to large constellations True Commercial Product support Breadth of missions supported ensures product capability Depth of customers demonstrates reliability quantumGND reflects the experience of supporting over 300 satellite missions over more than 20 years U.S. and international Commercial, civilian, and national security LEO, HEO, GEO, and Deep Space All mission types (science, weather, com) Single spacecraft to large constellations True Commercial Product support Breadth of missions supported ensures product capability Depth of customers demonstrates reliability

Our approach changes this: To this: quantumGND; a complete C2 to RF Approach quantumGND

SmallSats are changing the ground system industry Traditional Architectures can drive cost Instead look to: Choose software over hardware Embrace virtualization Reduce integration labor Build your next SmallSat program to open standards and commoditized products; avoid customization and over- specified systems Building the SmallSat Ground System 11 Our mission is ground systems, what’s yours?

Questions? 12 Our mission is ground systems, what’s yours?