Fifth International Undergraduate Research Conference (2021) of Military Technical College
Design and Implementation of an Onboard Computer and payload for Nano Satellite (CubeSat)
Paper ID : 1125-IUGRC5 (R2)
Authors:
Anas Khamees *1, Mohamed Alam2, Tarek Aboelnaga3, Abdelrahman Amer2, Ahmed Harbi3
1Mechatronics Engineering , Alexandria Higher Institute of Engineering&Technology , Alex , Egypt
2Computer Engineering, Alexandria Higher Institute of Engineering&Technology, Alex, Egypt
3Mechatronics Engineering, Alexandria Higher Institute of Engineering&Technology, Alex, Egypt
Abstract:
The satellite has many subsystems that require an onboard computer to organize and handle the data of satellite subsystems to send it to ground station. The On-Board Computer (OBC) is the brain of the satellite. We designed and implemented an onboard computer for a CubeSat which type of nanosatellites.

The project can be divided into two virtual parts, satellite, and ground station. We used an ATmega328 microcontroller which acts as the onboard computer and sensors such as IMU, temperature, radar, BMS and ESP32 CAM to act as satellite subsystems. The all-software code is run over a real-time operating system called FreeRTOS. FreeRTOS provides methods for multiple threads or tasks, mutexes, semaphores and software timers. FreeRTOS, therefore, provides the core real-time scheduling functionality, inter-task communication, timing, and synchronization primitives only. This means it is more accurately described as a real-time kernel or real-time executive.

We manufactured a 3D printed CubeSat to house our onboard computer unit and fabricated a 3-layer PCB to shield our components.
Keywords:
OBC; CubeSat; Nanosatellite; Payload
Status : Paper Accepted (Oral Presentation)