Automated Performance Testing to Maximize the Reliability of Ground Stations

Satellite ground station link failures are disruptive to space operations and are to be avoided. Critically, it may not be obvious if a link failure is caused by the spacecraft, or by the ground station, especially during LEOP. We present a scheduler to automate periodic calibration passes on known spacecraft and conduct Y-Factor G/T measurements when the ground station would otherwise be idle. Automatically scheduling, logging and comparing pass metrics against nominal values alerts us to any system performance deterioration. Such automated testing has been successfully used to identify antenna faults and temporary obstructions. We also discuss the usefulness of automatically monitoring radio noise to identify possible source of radio frequency interference and deal with any out of band transmissions. In the future we intend to use our doppler shift to identify noise causing issues.