[P-CG18] Future missions and instrumentation for space and planetary science

[PCG18-P14] Development of a miniaturized and power-efficient plasma wave receiver for use on CubeSats

*Takahiro Zushi¹, Hirotsugu Kojima² (1.National Institute of Technology, Nara College, 2.Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere, Kyoto University)

Keywords:Plasma Wave Instruments, ASIC, CubeSat

In recent years, there has been an active use of a standardized small satellite called a CubeSat, which consists of a 10 cm cube. CubeSats started as educational satellites, but are now also used for scientific observations. The use of CubeSats is also important in plasma wave observations to increase the number of observation opportunities and to achieve high spatial resolution multi-point simultaneous observations. However, it is difficult to install sufficiently high-performance plasma wave instruments on a CubeSat due to the size and power consumption of the instruments.
We propose a new type of plasma wave receiver that is miniaturized and power-efficient with the same performance as conventional receivers. The new receiver divides the observation range into several frequency bands in the analogue circuit. This makes it possible to reduce the sampling frequency in the low-frequency band, thereby reducing power consumption. In addition, we have developed the analog circuits for such receivers as Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) to reduce the circuit size.
In the presentation, we will report the detailed design of the ASIC and the results of the performance test using a breadboard model developed with the analog ASIC and a low-power microcontroller.