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Space-Based Radio Amateur Programme for Ionospheric Research

AMSAT-Italia's space-based radio amateur programme aims to contribute to international research on Space Weather and the ionosphere. The programme includes the SkyWave satellite project, Ionosfera ground segment, and RATS scientific payload.

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Space-Based Radio Amateur Programme for Ionospheric Research

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  1. www.amsat.it ———————————— Abstract ———————————— Radio-amateurs have always been involved and are willing to pursue research on ionospheric propagation. AMSAT-Italia since the end of the year 2000 initiated a space-based radio-amateur programme aiming to contribute to the international research effort on Space Weather and ionosphere. The full programme is divided into coherent sub-projects: SkyWave : is the Space Segment of the mission, based on a small satellite that will carry one scientific instrument specific to the ionosphere as well as radio-amateur communications payloads Ionosfera : is the Ground Segment of the mission. It is basically a web site that will inform the international community on the state of the mission and will allow users to obtain information on propagation and Space Weather. Ionosfera has been selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) to be a part of its programme on Space Weather (The website is: http://esa-spaceweather.net/sda/ionosfera/ . RATS (Radio Amateur TopSide Sounder): it is the scientific payload proposed to be embarked on SkyWave and also planned to be developed within the radio-amateur community. The whole paper is meant as an invitation to discuss and/or to collaborate on our programme…

  2. ———————————— Skywave ———————————— SKYWAVE satellite project was started within Amsat-Italia in the year 2000 to provide another instrument to contribute to the amateurs and hopefully to the scientific community to better understand radio propagation through ionosphere. Amateurs have built and orbited many satellites, most were and are of microsat class which will be also the class of SKYWAVE. MICROSAT: This class of satellite is well known among amateurs. ORBIT: The selected orbit is circular, polar; this to obtain a global coverage of Earth and, at the same time, to allow amateurs to communicate. Height will be 1000 km which is a good compromise for amateur activities and sounding activities.

  3. Data from AMSAT Mission (SKYWAVE) Forecasting Service (Set of SW tools in website) Data from other Services (Earth) Data from other Space Missions Data from/to Radio-Amateurs and Scientists ———————————— Ionosfera ——————————— The best tool for informing and reaching a community of users spread all over the world is internet. That is the reason why we decided to propose and create a website through which any interested user, scientist or amateur or just a curious person could use to be informed on the current state of space weather, skywave mission and related stuff. Moreover, on the website, are available a set of tools that could help in radio propagation forecasting. The collection and/or retrieval of the data needed to perform prediction or other actions are organized as follows:

  4. ———————————— Ionosfera ——————————— Ionosfera is essentially a website that will provide two kinds of (free-of-charge) services : • The provision of operational data on radio-amateur communications and on Space Weather RF effects. • A radio-communication prediction service based on several tools allowing to predict/understand long-range radio-communication links. Ionosfera will obviously be focussed on Radio-amateurs needs and expectations but will also attempt to create an European (hopefully Worldwide) network of motivated persons participating to and taking benefit from the Project.

  5. ———————————— R.A.T.S. ———————————— RATS stands for Radio Amateur Topside Sounder, it is the main scientific payload which will be onboard of the Skywave satellite. It is a completely dedicated topside sounder. Starting from the block diagram above, which is the result of what we plan to realize, we started our effort on design and development of RATS basic functions on the master RF signal generator. We choose a new approach, using Direct Digital Synthesis (DDS) techniques to generate, control and command the carrier frequency necessary for sounding. With this approach, we intend to make a reliable and very precise and stable signals for transmit and receive block of RATS.

  6. ———————————— R.A.T.S. ———————————— For test we have designed and built a single, simple board, in order to check and validate our ideas; a single DDS chip from Analog Devices was used to generate a carrier from 0.1 and 20 MHz. This board was controlled externally by PC and was capable to generate a good spectral signal around entire range of interest. On another board, we used a small microcontroller (from Atmel) for frequency settings of DDS. In the figures above and below first testings results on some parts of our sounder.

  7. www.amsat.it ———————————— Contacts ———————————— Amsat-Italia c/o Ing. Fabio Azzarello Via S. Caterina, 14 89121 Reggio Calabria Italy Email: iw8qku@amsat.org fabio.azzarello@gmail.com

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