Amateur Radio at UVic

Amateur radio activities at the University of Victoria Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering have a long established tradition. Faculty members conducting research into radio communication have consistently shown support for this activity, both in and out of the classroom. 

In class, undergraduate engineering students have the option to be licensed as amateur radio operators in third year as part of their ECE350 Communication Theory I course. Many take this route, and those who are motivated to pursue this hobby usually gravitate towards faculty supervised amateur radio related design projects, or the extracurricular UVic Experimental Radio Group.

Those students who have an interest in amateur satellite operations usually end up getting involved with the communications group of University of Victoria Satellite Design Team (UVSD). This volunteer, student lead organization offers many unique opportunities related to self training and education in radio communications, and satellites in particular.

Amateur Radio for ORCASat

Historically, UVSD competed in the Canadian Satellite Design Challenge (CSDC). As part of various offerings of this competition, numerous students got involved with designing, building, and testing radio equipment for OSCAR type missions as well as satellite telecommand.

When the partnership led by the University of Victoria got awarded an opportunity to build and launch a 2U CubeSat as part of the Canadian CubeSat Project (CCP), the focus of UVSD shifted from the CSDC to the ORCASat mission - the partnership’s submission for the CCP. 

As part of this unique opportunity, the UVSD communications team is designed, built, tested, and licensed an in house, end to end satellite communication system for ORCASat. This consists of an in house radio for the ground station and space station, an in house dipole antenna for the space station, as well as an RF front end assembled from COTS components for the ORCASat ground station. This RF front end is designed to be also compatible with the Flex-6600M based amateur satellite station in the laboratory of the amateur radio sponsor of the project.

The amateur radio activities of the team are supervised by Prof. Peter Driessen, VE7AB. His research activities are focused on wireless communications, and his laboratory is hosting the ground station operated by the team. Those students leading the TT&C subteam of ORCASat are also licensed amateurs, too.

System Overview

The ORCASat space station and ground station radios are custom designed by students, and they are functionally very similar half duplex UHF transceivers made to operate in the 435.0-438.0 amateur satellite allocation. Their designs are based on the OpenLST project from Planet, which has been customized extensively to be compatible with the requirements of the ORCASat bus and the ground station. The radio designs, and firmware are available publicly as part of the project GitLab repo as they are being developed. The key system parameters are summarized in the in the following section.

System Parameters

Please note that the spacecraft only transmits when prompted by its control station in Victoria, BC, Canada. All uplink commands are encrypted, and amateur radio operators do not have the ability to upload commands to the spacecraft, or prompt it to transmit telemetry on demand. Generally, at the control station is operated for at least one pass a day - to obtain information on which one to enable listening activities, please contact the team at management@orcasat.ca.

Key communication system parameters:

• ITU Emission Designator: 25K0F1DBN

• Assigned Frequency: 437.06 MHz

• Modulation: 2-ary FSK

• Data Whitening: PN9

• Data Rate: 10.17 kbit/s

• Deviation: 6.18 kHz

• Forward Error Correction: not used

• EIRP: 1.9 dBW

• Antenna: half wavelength tape spring dipole deployed from the port & starboard faces of the spacecraft

Transmission format information:

A packet radio scheme is used, with transmission format derived from what is used by the Open LST project, with variable payload length and structure based on the packet format natively supported by the Texas Instruments (TI) CC1110 transceiver. The default TI structure shown in Figure 51 on page 194 of the CC1110 datasheet. Below is an explanation of what features of the default TI structure used, and what are omitted.

• The optional Address byte is not used.

• Variable packet length mode is employed where the Length field gives the length of the Data field (payload) in bytes. When operating with variable length packets, the radio will use the first byte in the packet to determine how many additional bytes it should expect to receive. The length of the variable packet is determined by the first byte in the Payload Message field, which happens to be the Length field of our packet above.

• The PKTLEN register is used to set the maximum packet length allowed in RX.

• The hardware CRC is also not used, instead it is implemented in software in the payload.

When a packet is received, the hardware packet handler will strip the packet down to the Payload Data only. This payload data is the packet with Length, flag and footer fields. This packet is again operated on and made into the original | Hardware ID | Seq_Num | System | Command | Payload Message | packet, that the radio command handler will recognize and so will the CDH team.

The resulting RF messaging communication protocol is shown below. Fields marked with "*" are sent LSB first.

Other Amateur Radio Activities

The in house ground station radio shares an RF front end with the Flex-6600M based satellite/HF station for satellite operation, allowing voice, CW, digital, and SSTV satellite operations. The Flex-6600M allows high power operation on short wave bands, too. This unique configuration allows unparalleled opportunities for students to get involved with the area of amateur radio which they find most interesting. Some examples from previous operations using meteor scatter and SSTV are shown at the bottom of this page.

Amateur Radio Licensing

The UVSD offers Canadian amateur radio licensing opportunities for interested members, as well as the general public. Since the beginning of the ORCASat project, a number of students and community members obtained Basic, Basic with Honours and Advanced licenses through UVSD. While no amateur radio courses are offered at this time, the team maintains in house, ISED accredited examination capabilities. These, may be virtual or in person, following the appropriate ISED guidelines for each. Those interested should inquire at info@orcasat.ca for details on how to arrange an exam.