Preliminary Design of Payload Subsystem in the VX-SAT Communication Satellite

Modern communications is an indispensable tool for modern social economy and modern social life. The payload of a communication satellite provides radio relay for links between earth stations. With most commercial communication satellites the payload consists of two distinct parts with well defined interfaces: the repeater and the antennas. The repeater designates the electronic equipment which performs a range of functions on the signals from the receiving antenna before delivering them to the transmitting antenna. The VX-SAT project is a system engineering exercise, realized in the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) with the objective of training the persons in charge to design futures communication satellites in the Bolivarian Agency of Space Activities (ABAE) in Venezuela. This paper includes an overview of the VX-SAT system, the preliminary design of the communications payload and finally the method used to design the redundancy ring of the transponder subsystem.