Page 10 - Demo

Kąkolewo Ground station is the first low-earth-orbit satellites communication facility belonging to the academia in Poland. The project was financed with the funds of the 2014-2020 Wielkopolska Regional Operational Programme. The station became operational in 2024 and is equipped with two antenna systems installed on separate towers to ensure communication at small elevation angles. The first one consists of a parabolic antenna with the diameter of 4.5 m, operating in the C-band (5,8 GHz), and two sets of Yagi antennas, operating in the VHF (144 MHz) and UHF (435 MHz) bands, mounted on a rotator, making it possible to track satellites moving in the sky. The antennas work with the transceivers developed by the software-defined radio technology, as well as with software for autonomous communication session supervision. The second antenna system consists in a radome-covered tracking parabolic dish with the diameter of 4.5 m, designed for communication in the S (2 GHz) and X (8 GHz) bands. It is equipped with satellite modems operating in the CCSDS and DVB-S2/S2X standards, and with software for autonomous cooperation of the communication system with LEO satellites.Another important part of the project is the satellite data processing centre. It includes an edge computing server with a 50 TB disk array, supported by graphics accelerators equipped with 80,000 CUDA cores and 8192 TENSOR cores. It enables processing of satellite images obtained from, e.g., weather and observation satellites as well as other computationally intensive tasks.The communication system and the data processing centre is controlled from a control centre located at the PUT Institute of Radiocommunications and connected to the ground station via a highthroughput optical fibre connection. It hosts a command system server and some work stations with large-format displays, making it possible to monitor satellite missions and supervise communication sessions. The control software, developed specifically for the station, enables the user to schedule communication sessions, control modems, send commands to the satellite and receive telemetry data from the satellites, schedule and control processing tasks, etc. Currently, the facility is used by PUT teams for conducting research related to satellite communication security, developing SDR satellite modems, etc. Communication services are also offered to external clients, mainly national SMEs, government agencies and cooperating universities. Prof. Rafał Krenz Project leader