Automated booking and scheduling for CubeSats : Development of an automated Scheduling engine for satellite communication with emphasis on communication with CubeSats

Abstract: This thesis work details the development of an automatic scheduling engine for satellite communication from the operational stand point of a ground station. The aim has been to create a scheduling engine that autonomously calculates passes for a large number of satellites over a ground station and assigns these passes to appropriate resources. The process used can be described as rule based scheduling, where each satellite is assigned a set of specic requirements that the scheduler tries to satisfy in order to create a schedule that satises all specied requirements. This approach is in contrast to the most commonly used scheduling today, where satellite operators request passes and ground stations try to satisfy these requests, often manually. With rule based scheduling satellite operators are instead allowed to set requirements and the pass times are chosen automatically so as to optimize the process and admit a higher utilization of available resources. It is shown that a typical utilization of a ground stations resources of about 60% can be achieved. In addition to the scheduling engine a simple web interface has been developed, allowing the control of all parameters and scheduling through a web browser, thus demonstrating the ability to make this system more widely accessible for a broader range of users. The development of a rule based scheduler illustrates the possibility of making the process of satellite to ground communications more streamlined from the part of the ground station while at the same time permitting an increase in the number of passes it can support.