Design of an inter-satellite communication and ranging payload for a rendezvous and proximity operations mission

Abstract

This paper presents the design of an inter-satellite communication and round-trip time-of-flight ranging payload for a rendezvous and proximity operations mission, based around the commercial off-the-shelf transceiver SX1280 by Semtech. The payload is designed to operate in the S-band Space Operations frequency band (from 2.20 to 2.29 GHz), with the ISM band (from 2.4 to 2.5 GHz) available for ground testing.