S band LEO Satellite tracking techniques
I am working on the development of antenna system for LEO Satellite ground Station in S band. Can anyone please guide me about the techniques that we prefer for tracking the LEO Satellite. To name some, that i have so far seen in literature, are:
1. Programmed track (Probably named as auto track as well?)
2. Conical Scanning
3. Monopulse tracking
4. GPS
Now what I believe so far is that we should not prefer monopulse tracking (after i consulted literature) for LEO as its a well precised but complex system and we don't need to track the LEO satellite for more than 30min approx in a day. I think we should prefer monopulse in GEO satellites.
In programmed track, we use different freewares like "Orbitron" and "Wispdde" that automatically track the satellite and I think we should prefer this for LEO tracking as it is cheap and easily implementable . (But one question is, can we use it for commercial or official purposes or is it allowed for amateurs and hobbyists only? )
For conical scanning and GPS tracking, I really don't have any idea how do we track in these techniques and will they be beneficial or not.
Also please suggest if you know any other technique that is being used in commercial/official ground stations, and please correct/update me if I was wrong somewhere in the above discussion.
Looking for your kind assistance and positive feed back as soon as possible.
Best regards
We're using the programmed tracking for the L-band LEO (NOAA, METEOR and Fengyun) satellites with very good results and no problems at all with a 1.8m dish. They transmit at 1.7GHz. I think you can afford some tens of dollars for a license for such a tracking program as NOVA or Orbitron and have no problems with the official use.
I'd say that to choose between different tracking options you have to consider your antenna size, that is the radiation-pattern beamwidth. The narrower the beamwidth is, the sophisticated tracking you'll have.
alright.thank you for the comments rfmw.
One question that I have to ask is "Do the softwares have information of all satellites saved in them or they use some method, like Keplerian Elements for tracking a satellite?
and one last thing, can we track the future satellites (that will be launched in coming years) using the designed GS? What i mean is how will a software realize that a new satellite have been added into the space. I am sorry i'm very new to this field and don't have much idea about the programmed tracking.
Thank you.
Yes, you must always load into the tracking software the updated Keplerian elements, before you do any satellite tracking. Once a week is sufficient. When a new satellite is in the space, somebody must create and keep managing/updating the Keplerian elements for it. As far as I know, this is done by one (only?) american military facility, which updates the Keplers for many satellites using radar (and/or optical systems?). See www.celestrak.com for the newest Keplers. Also the Keplers for experimental satellites (small cubesats) can be found there.