Design and Implementation of a Low Cost Amateur Radio Unit for Cube Satellites

Abstract

The Philippines is susceptible to natural calamities such as earthquakes, volcano eruptions, and typhoons where communications play a vital role to a successful disaster risk reduction procedure. Cellular phones, which most citizens rely on, uses cellular towers that may go down during calamities, rendering cellular communications unreliable for rescue operations. Having the characteristics of a reliable and robust communication system, amateur radio is accessible to the general population and has a lower cost of implementation. An example of an amateur radio infrastructure are amateur satellites (AmSats). With the concept of lean satellites such as Cube Satellites (CubeSats), production and launching of amateur satellites is practical as an infrastructure to support amateur radio communication especially in a developing country like the Philippines. In this paper, we propose a design of a low-cost amateur radio unit using low-cost modules such as a Raspberry Pi that can fit in a Cube Satellite s space constraints. With this design, it is possible to further reduce the cost of producing amateur radio satellites that can be used as a back up for amateur radio communication especially in terms of emergencies.