Papers and Presentations by Bryan Klofas
Research Engineer, SRI International
Electrical Engineering, Cal Poly State University
bklofas (at) gmail.com

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1. AMSAT Symposium - November 2011
   • Paper: Frequency Allocation for Government-funded CubeSats: NSF Paves the Way. Published in the proceedings of the AMSAT-NA Space Symposium in San Jose, California, this paper discusses frequency allocation and spectrum management for the current and future NSF CubeSats. NSF has successfully allocated two NSF CubeSats on government frequencies, and this paper documents the process that these CubeSats went through. Also discussed is the long-term goal of creating a new "small satellite" allocation for these low-power and short duration educational CubeSat missions.
   • Presentation: Frequency Allocation for Government-funded CubeSats: NSF Paves the Way. This presentation describes the paper, gives a brief background on all the current NSF CubeSats, and discusses their choices of frequency allocation.


2. CubeSat Summer Workshop - August 2011
   • Presentation: CubeSat Communications Survey Update. This presentation is an update to my earlier paper about CubeSat Communication Subsystems. It discusses the comm systems of all 24 of the CubeSats launched since that earlier paper was published in fall 2008, including the 3 CubeSats on STP-S26 and the 8 CubeSats launched on the latest Falcon 9 launch. The rest of the presentations from this conference can be found here.
   • Video: See a video of this presentation on Ustream, part of all the videos streamed by the CubeSat Summer Workshop 2011 channel.


3. CubeSat Developers Workshop - April 2011
   • Presentation: CubeSat High-Speed Downlink Communications Update. This presentation was given at the 8th Annual CubeSat Developers Workshop at Cal Poly. It's a status update on all the happenings with the NSF high-speed downlink group, including discussion about the long-term NSF effort to obtain a small slice of spectrum solely dedicated to CubeSat communications. The rest of the presentations from this conference can be found here.


4. CubeSat Developers Workshop - April 2010
   • Presentation: CubeSat High-Speed Downlink Communications (CHDC) Update. This short presentation at the 7th Annual CubeSat Developers Workshop at Cal Poly gave a brief status update of the CubeSat High-Speed Downlink group. The presentation showed the current state of licensing for the NSF CubeSat project satellites. Also included are slides from Andy Clegg, Spectrum Coordinator for the NSF, which describes the NTIA licensing process. The rest of the presentations from this conference can be found here.
   • Video: See this presentation on Ustream.


5. AMSAT-NA Journal - November 2009
   • Paper: A Survey of CubeSat Communication Subsystems. This is a smaller version of my Comm paper presented at the 2008 Developers Conference at Cal Poly (see below). It only includes the latest CubeSat launch on the PSLV-C9 from India in April 2008. This was published in the November/December 2009 edition of The AMSAT Journal, a publication of The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation.


6. AMSAT-UK Colloquium - July 2009
   • Presentation: CP6: T+2 Months and other thoughts. This presentation at the AMSAT-UK Colloquium talked a little bit about the status of CP6, and also described the NRL Payload, CPX Decoder, and survey results. The survey was given out to people using CPX Decoder, just to get a feel what equipment is being used to track CP6.
   • Video: Watch a video of this presentation, courtesy of the British Amateur Television Club.


7. CubeSat Developers Conference - April 2009
   • Presentation: CubeSat Thermal Environment Chamber. This presentation showed an easy way to build a thermal vacuum chamber for small payloads and CubeSats. It is designed to be very simple to construct, and uses all off-the-shelf products and minimal machining, perfect for universities on a tight budget. Karl van Dyk and Rick Doe, also at SRI International, helped with design and manufacturing of CTEC. The rest of the presentations from this conference can be found here.
   • Documents: CTEC files. Block diagrams, pictures, and parts list for the CubeSat Thermal Environment Chamber.


8. CubeSat Developers Conference - April 2008
   • Paper: A Survey of CubeSat Communication Subsystems. I wrote this paper, along with Jason Anderson and Kyle Leveque, about all the different comm systems of CubeSats in orbit right now, including the radios used, modulation schemes, successes of each method, and the associated ground stations or ground station networks. It shows that very little data has been downlinked from the CubeSats currently in orbit, and provides some recommendations to future CubeSat developers about their communication subsystem.
   • Draft: Earlier version of the above paper, not including the April 2008 CubeSat launch from India, and missing some information on the Japanese CubeSats. It was presented at the 2008 CubeSat Developers Workshop at Cal Poly on 10 April 2008.
   • Presentation: Survey of CubeSat Communication Subsystems. Presented during the Groundstation Operations section of the workshop. The rest of the presentations from this conference can be found here.


9. Senior Project - Spring 2008
   • Paper: Improving Receive Sensitivity of the CPX Bus. For my Senior Project, under the direction of Professor Dennis Derickson, I increased the receive sensitivity of the satellite by adding a LNA before the CC1000 receiver. We didn't have a LNA on our CP2 and CP3 satellites because we thought it wasn't necessary. The LNA is a Maxim MAX2640, and the bulk of the project was matching the LNA to the board. Both the LNA and board impedances will need to be tested.
   • Proposal: Proposal for the project.


10. GENSO Workshop - November 2007
    • Presentation: Status Update. This short presentation (at Aalborg University in Denmark) to the rest of the GENSO groups describes what we're working on at Cal Poly for the project. This workshop kicks off the Alpha Test phase of the project. The entire project was successfully demoed in front of a live audience (us), and it worked beautifully. The Mission Control Client booked downlink sessions with the Ground Station Server, and the Ground Station Server controlled the radio and rotors at the AAU ground station (across the building). The running Authentication Server authenticated people and registered satellites on the network. The Alpha Test phase starts in December 2007.
    
    
11. AMSAT Symposium - October 2007
    • Paper: GENSO: A Global Ground Station Network. This paper outlines the GENSO theory of operation and goes in depth into how the different work packages interact. Cal Poly is part of Work Package J, tasked with Testing and Verification of the project. This paper was published in the conference proceedings. Graham Shirville G3VZV presented on my paper at the AMSAT Symposium in Pittsburgh, PA, on October 26, 2007.


12. CubeSat Summer Workshop - August 2007
    • Presentation: PolySat: Launch and Operations. This presentation, with Justin Foley during the CubeSat pre-conference workshop at the AIAA/USU Small Satellite Conference in Logan, UT, on August 12, 2007, discusses the recent Dnepr 2 cluster CubeSat launch. This presentation includes lessons learned and on-orbit data. It also gives a in-depth introduction of GENSO, and includes the function of the different servers and how they interact. The rest of the presentations from this workshop can be found here.


13. CubeSat Developers Conference - April 2007
    • Presentation: PolySat: A University CubeSat Story. Presented with Parin Patel at the CubeSat Developers Workshop in Huntington Beach, CA, on April 20, 2007, this presentation discusses previous launches organized by Cal Poly, the launch failure, and GENSO. This presentation occurred three days after the successful Dnepr 2 launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, so we were still doing preliminary checks on CP4. We hadn't heard from CP3 yet. The rest of the presentations from this conference can be found here.


14. GENSO Workshop - February 2007
    • Presentation: Work Package J: GENSO Workshop III. This was presented to the other work packages at GENSO Workshop III at ESTEC in The Netherlands, on February 19, 2007. It outlines what we think we are doing for GENSO, and introduces the other work packages to our earth station. For GENSO, we are in charge of the Testing and Verification Work Package, which includes systems-level testing from both sides, alpha and beta testing, and the construction of a software "satellite simulator," which plugs into Work Package B and tests the network from the satellite all the way to the MCC.


15. RMAP Meeting - January 2007
    • Presentation: Satellite Communications. The first presentation of the RF, Microwave, and Photonics club at Cal Poly, a club under SPIE. This technical presentation includes a short background on CubeSats, then jumps into detail about the communications system of our CP2 and CP3 satellites, and includes block diagrams and schematics. This presentation was done before the launch (but after the Dnepr 1 launch failure), so we had no idea whether our satellite was going to work or not.


16. AMSAT Symposium - October 2006
    • Paper: Amateur Radio and the CubeSat Community. This paper explores the mutually beneficial relationship between the Amateur Radio community and CubeSat developers. It also includes a discussion of bandwidth and handoff tests between the University of Tokyo, Lulea University of Technology, and Cal Poly, performed in April 2006. This paper was published in the conference proceedings.
    • Presentation: Amateur Radio and the CubeSat Community. Presentation of paper at the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation Symposium in San Francisco on October 8, 2006.


17. Tokyo - July 2006
    • Presentation: Cal Poly Earth Station. Presented at the 1st International Workshop on Ground Station Network hosted by UNISEC at the University of Tokyo, Hongo Campus, in Tokyo, Japan. The purpose of this conference was to showcase the Japanese GSN, and to share knowledge of a future ground station network. This presentation gives a general background of the earth station at Cal Poly. This conference started the whole GENSO project.

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http://www.klofas.com/papers/index.html
Updated 04 October 2011