gomx – Daniel Estévez

TY-2 decoded

In January, I took a look at TY-2 telemetry. This is a Chinese cubesat that transmits 9k6 FSK telemetry in the 70cm Amateur band. In my previous post I tried to reverse engineer the packets from TY-2 and got as far as recognizing the syncword, and noting that the syncword is the same as the one sent by the GOMspace NanoCom AX100 transceiver. However, in all AX100 transceivers I had seen, the syncword was sent scrambled with a G3RUH scrambler, and TY-2 sent it unscrambled. This left me a bit puzzled. The payload seemed to be scrambled and I was unable to descramble it, preventing any further progress.

Since then, I have tried to get in contact with the satellite team to see if they could give me any additional information about TY-2 and its companion TY-6 (which uses the same format). Finally, the satellite team have answered me, giving me some details and confirming me that they use the AX100. This has allowed me to finish the decoder. An updated decoder is now available in gr-satellites. Thanks to BI1AEM for his help. Here I look at the specific details of the format used by TY-2.

A first look at TY-2

TY-2 is a 6U Chinese cubesat that was launched on January 19th in a CZ-11 rocket from Jiuquan, together with several other small satellites, including TY-6. According to the IARU Satcoord, TY-2 and TY-6 transmit 9k6 GMSK telemetry in the 70cm Amateur satellite band (435.350MHz for TY-2 and 436.100MHz for TY-6).

Several Amateurs such as K4KDR and PD0OXW have tried to decode the packets from TY-2 and TY-6 without success. I have taken a look to an IQ recording of TY-2 that Scott K4KDR has sent me and at least I’ve managed to do something (though not much) with it. Here I describe my findings.

D-SAT support added to gr-satellites

D-SAT is an Italian cubesat that will demonstrate a new deorbit hardware. Apparently this system uses dedicated propulsion to make the satellite re-enter from a 500km orbit in 30 minutes. It also carries three more experiments and it was launched in June 23 together with several other small satellites. According to the information from the team, it transmits 4k8 telemetry in the 70cm band. It is not stated explicitly, but we read attentively, we see that it uses a NanoCom U482C transceiver from GOMspace.

Recently, I have seen Mike DK3WN decode very nice images from D-SAT and I have investigated a bit to see what software he is using.

The satellite team provides some decoding software through their forum, which requires registration. Version 2 of their software can be downloaded directly here using the password dsatmission. Its software is based on GNU Radio and it uses a few components from gr-satellites, namely the U482C decoder and some KISS and CSP blocks. These have been incorporated into their decoder from before gr-satellites was restructured. They include a note thanking me in the README, but I didn’t ever hear from them that they were using gr-satellites. It would have been nice if they had contacted me, since this opens up many possibilities for collaboration.

Apart from that, they include a groundstation software which performs telemetry decoding and so on. Unfortunately, the groundstation software is closed-source, distributed only as an x86_64 Linux executable. This is not good for Amateur Radio. We should strive for open source software and open specifications for everything that transmits in our bands. The groundstation software is also distributed in a quite ugly manner as the remains of an Eclipse project (source code stripped, of course). However, it is interesting because it seems that this software is the same they use in their groundstation, and it supports sending commands to the satellite. Naturally, the command transmission is not implemented in the software they distribute, but it is still very interesting to have a peek and see what kinds of commands the satellite supports.

I have added a D-SAT decoder to gr-satellites. The decoder supports sending frames to their groundstation software. Here I describe how to set everything up.

Viterbi decoding for NanoCom U482C

The NanoCom U482C is a a transceiver made by GOMspace intended for cubesats and other small satellites. Currently, it seems to be out of production, since it has been superseded by the newer NanoCom AX100, but nevertheless the U482C is being flown in new satellites, such as the QB50 AU03 INSPIRE-2. The U482C is also used in GOMspace’s cubesat GOMX-1, so we may say that GOMX-1 is the reference satellite for U482C.

My gr-satellites project includes a partially reverse-engineered U482C decoder which is able to decode GOMX-1 and several other satellites. It does CCSDS descrambling and Reed-Solomon decoding. Recently, Jan PE0SAT made a recording of INSPIRE-2. I tried to decode it with gr-satellites and although the signal was very good, the Reed-Solomon decoder failed. The history behind this recording is interesting. After being released from the ISS near the end of May, INSPIRE-2 wasn’t transmitting as it should. The satellite team got in contact with Amateurs having powerful stations to try to telecommand the satellite and get it transmitting. Eventually, the CAMRAS 25m dish was used to telecommand and activate INSPIRE-2. Later, Jan made a recording from his groundstation.

After exchanging some emails with the satellite team, I learnt that the U482C also supports an \(r=1/2\), \(k=7\) convolutional code, which is used by INSPIRE-2 but not by other satellite I’ve seen. I have added Viterbi decoding support for the U482C decoder in gr-satellites, so that INSPIRE-2 can now be decoded. Here I describe some details of the implementation.

A tour of QB50

The QB50 project consists in a constellation of cubesats with the goal of studying the thermosphere. The cubesats are built by different universities around the world and each of them carries one of three different scientific instruments. A total of 36 cubesats have been built for the QB50 project. All of them transmit on the 70cm Amateur satellite band. A total of 28 were launched to the ISS on April 18th on the Cygnus CRS-7 resupply ship. Over the last two weeks, they have been released from the ISS. The complete launch schedule and radio information can be found here (note that the launches on May 23rd were delayed due to an unforeseen EVA). Several other non-QB50 cubesats, some of them transmitting in the Amateur bands, have also been released together with the QB50 satellites. This is probably the time that more Amateur satellite have been released at the same time. The satellites have not separated much yet, giving a great opportunity to record a single pass and analyse the telemetry of all the satellites.

A few days after the release of all the 28 QB50 cubesats, on May 29th at 18:25:29 UTC, I made an SDR recording of the complete pass of all the cubesats. The recording spans the 3MHz of the 70cm Amateur satellite band (435-438MHz) and lasts 23 minutes and 08 seconds. It was made from locator IN80do using a 7 element handheld yagi (the Arrow satellite yagi) held in the vertical polarization and a LimeSDR. The gain of the LimeSDR was set to maximum, but no external LNA was used. Here I look at the recording, list the satellites heard, and decode their telemetry.

AISAT and ATHENOXAT-1

It turns out that the satellites AISAT and ATHENOXAT-1 use the NanoCom U482C transceiver from GomSpace. This is the same transceiver that GOMX-1 uses, so the same decoder can be used.

I’ve added example flowgraphs and wav recordings to gr-ax100 and complete decoders to gr-satellites. Note that there is no telemetry parser yet, because I don’t have the telemetry format used by these satellites. Thanks to Jan PE0SAT for sending me an AISAT recording and to Roland PY4ZBZ for sending an ATHENOXAT-1 recording (note that this satellite is on a low inclination orbit, so it can only be received near the equator).

I’m on the lookout for any other satellites using the NanoCom U482C transceiver or the NanoCom AX100 transceiver (this is the transceiver that GOMX-3 uses), as it should be possible to decode them with gr-ax100.

Decoding GOMX-1 telemetry

GOMX-1 is a 2U cubesat from GomSpace that was launched in November 2013 into a sun-synchronous orbit. As far as I know, it was the first satellite with an ADS-B receiver payload. It transmits telemetry on the 70cm Amateur band, including some data from the ADS-B receiver, as GOMX-3 does. Some Amateurs, including me, had tried to decode its telemetry on several occasions, without success. GOMX-3 will decay in about 4 weeks, as it was launched from the ISS on October 2015. Therefore, it now becomes more interesting to decode GOMX-1, which is in a longer term orbit. After one more serious try, I’ve been able to decode the telemetry. This is the first time that an Amateur decodes telemetry from GOMX-1 completely. The decoder code can be found in gr-satellites and gr-ax100, including an example wav file in gr-ax100/examples/gomx-1.wav.

GOMX-3 data download

This weekend, Mike DK3WN caught GOMX-3 downloading a good amount of data. See his post here. This data consists mainly of the satellite retransmitting a lot of beacons that were generated during the last 16 hours or so.

GomSpace has recently released a complete parser for GOMX-3 beacons of type 1 0 (these are the beacons that contain ADS-B data). I have already incorporated this code into my gr-ax100 fork.

The binary data in KISS format (almost 250KB) and the parsed beacon data received during this data download is in gist. Probably the most interesting thing is the ADS-B data. Below you can see all the aircraft on the map. Clicking on any of them will show the details for that aircraft.

Since the orbit of GOMX-3 has an inclination of 51.6º, the satellite doesn’t usually detect aircraft above 55ºN or below 55ºS. GomSpace has an image which shows lots of flights received with GOMX-3. There, the major air routes and hubs are apparent.

Decoding packets from GOMX-3: CSP packets

A few days ago, I talked about the modulation and coding used by the satellite GOMX-3. Here, I will look at the contents of the CSP packets transmitted by this satellite.

Decoding packets from GOMX-3: modulation and coding

Recently, Mike DK3WN pointed me to some decoder software for the satellite GOMX-3. This satellite is a 3U cubesat from GomSpace and transmits in the 70cm Amateur band. It has an ADS-B receiver on board, as well as an L-band SDR. As far as I know, no Amateur has decoded packets from this satellite previously, and Mike had some problems running the decoder software. I have taken a look at the software and tried my best to decode some packets from GOMX-3. So far, I have been able to do Reed-Solomon decoding and get CSP packets. However, I don’t have the precise details for the beacon format yet. Here, I describe all of my findings.