Development and application of Link Budget calculator for a Spacecraft mission: GSN design and Link Budget analysis for SROC support

This thesis stems from the work done during the internship at Telespazio and its main topic is the study of Link Budget calculation for telemetry, telecommand and ranging signals in satellite communications to analyse the Earth-to-space interface. The main goal was to develop a tool that would autonomously perform all the calculations necessary for margin assessment to determine whether the link is closed or not. This software, implemented with MATLAB, was conceived as an advancement of the tools used by Telespazio, aiming for greater completeness, additional configurations, more complex features, and increased user friendliness, trying to adapt it to any kind of scenario. The software has been tested and exploited to study the link budget of some missions managed by Telespazio, proving that it is fully functional and the results it produces are reliable, but its most important application has been the study of the link budget of SROC (Space Rider Observation Cubesat) mission, conceived by Politecnico di Torino. Considering that Telespazio will provide additional ground stations to the mission, the goal has been the design of a feasible and efficient ground station network, with the right antennas and a reliable ground-to-satellite interface to ensure effective communication at all times. Given the practical, econimic and logistic limitations of this type of task, the use of link budget software was critical for the choice of equipment and all features. In addition, to complete the work, visibility analysis was also carried out to study the coverage provided by the GSN, particularly in a critical phase such as docking.