Imported from GitHub: AMSAT-NA/PacSatFSKBoard · commit 949f6ed

Description

Ground station board

README

PacSatAFSKBoard

Hardware design for the PacSat AX5043 based board

This repository contains a board design for use in satellites for packet message storing and forwarding and for general control.

It has a TMS570LS0914PGE processor for control and packet handling. It uses 5 AX5043 chips for the radio interfaces, four receive channels (uplinks) and one transmit channel (downlink). Operation is full duplex with receive on 144-148MHz and transmit on 430-440MHz.

Though it is designed for packet satellite, the design can be used for any sort of full duplex dual band FSK radio operation with or without FM. The AX5043 supports a large number of FSK protocols (if you can figure out how to program the AX5043).

With some filter redesign it could support a number of different bands, too, maybe even up to 1280MHz.

The board also has MRAM storage for persistent data storage and an RTC for timekeeping. There's space on the board to add more things.

The board has a CAN interface and a serial interface on top of the radio interfaces for interfacing to other boards in the system.

Output power is about 2 watts. It has the ability to measure forward and reflected power on the output. It also has a sort of loopback connector on the RF to test the receive and transmit chain.

The board is designed to be able to be used in an active/standby configuration where you have two of the same boards and switch the RF between the boards depending on which is active.

For information on the interfaces to the board, software and hardware, see the docs/ICD.md document.

For more details on the actual design, see the docs/Design.md document.