Automatic tracking system for weather satellite image reception

We present a tracking ground system for low Earth-orbiting (LEO) satellite image reception composed of a software part and a material part. The developed prediction software (LAAR-TRACK) ensures an efficient satellite orbit determination. It is based on the simplified general perturbations model (SGP4) used by the North American Aerospace Defense Command for generating orbital elements. LAAR-TRACK gives the azimuth and the elevation needed for the antenna to signal, in real time, LEO satellites during their passage above the ground receiving station. The software is loaded on a computer directly connected, via the parallel port, to the tracking interface that we developed, which will be detailed in this paper. The proposed tracking system is composed of a simple hardware interface structure that can be easily technically reproduced without any programming. The cost of the proposed tracking interface is lower than that of the other proposed realizations