2022 IEEE North Karnataka Subsection Flagship International Conference (NKCon) 1 978-1-6654-9790-9/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE Real-time Decoding of Satellite Signals Aniket D. Kulkarni Student, School of Electronics and Communication Dr. Vishwanath Karad MIT-World Peace University Pune, Maharashtra, India anikerry@ieee.org Raghunath S. Bhadade School of ECE Dr. Vishwanath Karad MIT-World Peace University Pune, Maharashtra, India raghunath.bhadade@mitwpu.edu.in Apurva A. Naik School of ECE Dr. Vishwanath Karad MIT-World Peace University Pune, Maharashtra, India apurva.naik@mitwpu.edu.in Vinaya G. Gohokar School of ECE Dr. Vishwanath Karad MIT-World Peace University Pune, Maharashtra, India vinaya.gohokar@mitwpu.edu.in Abstract—Satellite is a common term these days and a tremen- dous amount of work is conducted in space and technology. The proposed system briefs about the decoding of live satellite signals with help of a mini ground station using USRPB200 Software Defined Radio (SDR), RTL SDR mini and a self-designed V- shaped Antenna. The objective of the proposed system includes decoding the satellite signals in the Ultra High Frequency(UHF) and Very High Frequency (VHF) bands with their respective implementations in the GNU Radio environment. Signals from International Space Station (ISS), Meteor Satellites, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), are captured during multiple passes to study in detail and explore how communication exactly happens. The proposed system also sheds light on the hardware and software used while decoding the signals, the mini-ground station, the different challenges faced during the process, and the solutions to overcome the same. Index Terms—Satellite Signal Decoding, SDR, GNU Radio, SDRsharp, ISS, NOAA I. INTRODUCTION While everybody is aware that various satellites are orbiting the earth, many of us do not know their capacities, keeping some TV Broadcast satellites an exception. After the millen- nium generations, satellites have become a quite common term to everyone. As the applications are tremendous, satellites are used by everyone knowingly or unknowingly worldwide. A standard definition for satellite is any object (natural or man- made) orbiting around a planet, moon, or star, periodically. The satellites these days have accomplished many advancements and are much upgraded ever since the first successful launch. It is clear that humans rely on satellites for a variety of purposes because more than a thousand of them are constantly rotating around the Earth. Satellites are an integral part of daily life for many reasons, including weather monitoring, imagery, scientific data collection and transfer, media communications, and Global Positioning System (GPS). The commonly used applications include Navigation and Communication. These satellites revolve around in specific orbit and the frequency of communication is set by the distance from earth, the amount of data to be exchanged and the appli- cation. What shocks everyone is that many of these satellites send signals that anybody can get and decode. These signals are not encrypted using complex algorithms and are openly broadcasted all over. Encoded in those signals is everything in high-resolution pictures. It can be images of the earth, weather, or cloud. The best part is that most of the hardware and sensors used in these satellites are readily available in markets these days and open to all. In the proposed system, the aim is to decode these satellite signals with available material and design a mini-ground station. At the time of doing a literature survey, it was found that many organisations and individuals had developed their ground stations for working on satellite data and establishing commu- nication as per requirement. However, some of the designed ground stations were too complex, heavy, and costly. While some were affordable but lacked accuracy. Some worked just on simulations. The authors in the paper [1] have discussed the significance of the Software-Defined Network (SDN) and illustrated the simulations of future satellite communications under GNU radio and SDN. Another paper [2], shows a developed prototype which allows visualizations of meteorological picture reception sys- tems using SDR and GNU radio. After going through the research paper, the main motive behind designing the proposed system and obtaining the results with a self-designed antenna was clear. A low-cost, stationary ground station system is shown in the paper, [3] which can not only receive NOAA- 19 satellite signals but the signals of satellites inclined at twenty degrees. The authors in this paper have used various tools to get images from the Polar Operational Environmental Satellites (POES). A much modular architecture which has simulations and can be customised for any type of satellite mission is presented in the paper [4] using SDR for Low Earth Orbit satellites. The in- 2022 IEEE North Karnataka Subsection Flagship International Conference (NKCon) | 978-1-6654-5342-4/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/NKCON56289.2022.10126774 Authorized licensed use limited to: Technische Hochschule Würzburg-Schweinfurt. Downloaded on May 02,2024 at 22:53:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.