The CanX-7 Nanosatellite ADS-B Mission: A Preliminary Assessment
- 1 Department of Physics, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
- 2 Department of Physics, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Abstract
The development of space-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) will allow surveillance of aircraft in areas not covered by radar or ground-based ADS-B systems. In September 2016, the Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment-7 (CanX-7) satellite was launched into a 690 km sun synchronous orbit with an ADS-B receiver payload. The first phase of ADS-B data collection took place over the North Atlantic between 4 and 31 October. A preliminary assessment of the data indicates that the average ADS-B signal strength is close to the calculated receiver detection threshold of D94.5 ± 0.5 dBm. The pattern of received ADS-B reception appears to be consistent with a signal propagation model developed for the CanX-7 mission. Future work includes the comparison of coincidental flight plan data for the operations area and an analysis of the payload antenna pattern.
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