Abstract:
The small satellite eld has become popular amongst academia, amateur satellite (AM-
SAT) community, and commercial businesses due to the miniaturization of components and
smaller form factors. Speci cally, the PocketQube structure has gained attraction for its
size and a ordability of launch fees. However, the size constraint makes it di cult to gener-
ate power and limits the transmit power for downlink. Therefore, e cient data modulation
is key to providing high data downlink rates. Also, the typical VHF and UHF frequency
spectrum used for satellites is getting congested. Hence, the higher frequency bands such
as S-band and X-band are gaining attraction and o er higher data bandwidth. To address
both issues, an architecture to implement QPSK modulation for S-band operation is pro-
posed. The design is focused on low-power PocketQubes and the implementation is targeted
for academia and the AMSAT community.
