Recently, I showed my experiences receiving and decoding LilacSat-2 telemetry. I managed to get 15 packets of 4k8 GFSK telemetry and 15 packets of 9k6 BPSK telemetry during a single pass. However, I couldn’t decode these packets because I didn’t know the telemetry format. It turns out that Mike DK3WN has released a decoder software. Here I show Mike’s software decoding the packets I received.
Category: Software
Using, configuring and programming amateur radio related software.
Decoding LilacSat-2 telemetry
After having my first QSO through the Harbin Institute of Technology amateur radio satellite LilacSat-2, I decided to give a serious try to the telemetry decoding software. This is available as a GNURadio module. A Linux distribution with all the proper software installed and configured is provided, for an easy use. However, I have used GNURadio in the past, so I wanted to try to setup the GNURadio module directly on my machine.
The web page for LilacSat-2 gives also a description of the different telemetry formats. The satellite has an SDR radio transmitting on 437.200MHz. This radio is used for the FM amateur radio transponder and also to transmit several different telemetry formats. The satellite also transmits telemetry on 437.225MHz, presumably using a different (non-SDR) radio and a different antenna, so that the satellite can keep transmitting telemetry even if the SDR system fails. Typically, when the FM transponder is disabled, the satellite will transmit 9k6 BPSK telemetry on 437.200MHz and 4k8 GFSK telemetry on 437.225MHz. These can be seen in the picture above, which was made using my RF recording and baudline. The packet on the upper right is 4k8 GFSK and the packet on the lower left is 9k6 BPSK. Notice the slight slant due to Doppler.
Listening to the FreeDV net by WebSDR
Since I’m away from my usual QTH, I decided to join yesterday’s FreeDV net by listening through the University of Twente WebSDR and giving signal reports on the QSO Finder to the stations transmitting.