GAUSS Srl has gained an extensive knowledge on ground stations hardware and operations during these years and has its own fixed ground station in Rome for satellite tracking and monitoring.

Main characteristics

Bidirectional L-Band (VHF and UHF) - downlink and uplink - communications for TT&C, satellite tracking, monitoring and command. Analogic radio and TNCs or SDR frontends are used;
S-Band downlink for reception of scientific and broadband data from the satellite with a 1.5m dish antenna and SDR frontend;
The ground station is fully automated for controlling the satellites already launched (UniSat-5 and UniSat-6);
The ground station may be used on request to give support to recently launched satellites to monitor their status and, if needed, to send commands too.

GAUSS has also transportable radio equipment for making measurements of satellites in other regions (mostly in VHF/UHF Bands).

GAUSS offers:

- Complete Ground Station Kits – tailored to the customers' needs – and technical consultancy in order to install their own ground station;

- Support for in-orbit operations via its fully automated ground station based in Rome.

The ground station is designed for VHF & UHF (uplink & downlink) and S-Band (downlink). It can be interfaced via Internet using TCP/IP communications to let customers interface remotely with their own satellite, in a fully transparent way.

The ground station will handle, on its own, the antenna pointing and radio Doppler configurations.

Support, Hardware & Software KIT

GAUSS offers consultancy and entire kits in order to design and build your own ground station, as it has gained a broad experience after several years of ground stations design, development and operations for micro and nano satellites. Ground station consultancy for L-Band and S-Band can also be provided.

GAUSS offers customized software to fully automate your ground station, based on your hardware needs: the software and its pseudo Artificial Intelligence are developed in order to be fully integrated with the specific customer mission.

Hardware Features

High gain Yagi-Uda VHF and UHF Antennas (>16 dBi for UHF);
Low-noise amplifiers and band-pass filters for VHF and UHF bands;
Low-loss RF coaxial cables;
1,5m parabolic dish for higher frequencies downlink (up to 6GHz, default feed is for S-band);
VHF: Uplink and Downlink up to 100W using radio and TNC, SDR optional;
UHF: Uplink and Downlink up to 70W, using radio and TNC, SDR optional;
TX using ICOM-9100 hardware, RX recording and decoding via SDR;
Several RF and electrical fuses for lightning protection;
S-Band: Downlink using SDR for recording and post-processing of I/Q RF data;
Az/El rotor for high-torque maneuvering;
Hardware components power switch on/off to minimize power consumption;
Full HD Camera for instant antenna monitoring and picture logging.

Software Features

Automatic TLE Download from publicly available repositories;
SGP4 propagator as suggested by USAF NORAD’s Space-Track;
Rotor Control (compatibility with several rotor controllers, e.g. Yaesu, RF Hamdesign);
Assisted rotor pointing calibration and verification using Sun position;
Fully compatible with ICOM-9100 satellite radio and GAUSS USB Ground Dongle;
Separated Doppler shift corrections for uplink and downlink frequencies;
DUPLEX TX/RX mode;
Instant weather check and logging, in order to operate the ground station safely;
Lightning detection for safe antennas operation;
Instant logging of all subsystems operation;
Ground map with live Earth clouds;
Compatible with several TNCs (Kantronics, Symek, Paccomm, Kenwood);
Email report to ground station operators;
Instant email alerts for non-nominal conditions of the satellite or GS hardware components;
Session programming for weeks of unattended ground station operations;
GUI Command recording for easy session programming;
One button programming to include a whole set of commands in the session;
Manual override during pass for last-minute command addition;
Control and handling of multiple satellites using configurable priorities;
Satellite TLM decoding, graphing and archiving into a database accessible by web;
Integrated satellite payload data handling and decoding (e.g. for image file processing);
TCP/IP connections for remote ground station & TNC operations.