SDR Based Ground Station for Image Reception from Weather Satellites

Abstract

From the specific view of space, sophisticated Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites provide us with information on cloud movements, precipitation, land and sea surface temperatures. These satellites are fascinating as they continuously transmit an image signal that is easy to decipher of what they are actually looking at. This data is useful to predict weather and rainfall. The main purpose of this work is to develop an inexpensive ground station for receiving the images from these satellites and give a rough prediction of weather and rainfall. Software Defined Radio (SDR) was used for the reception of these signals along with V-Dipole, QFH Antenna and several open source software’s. So far this work is successful in receiving signal from 40+ satellite passes of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) and METEOR-M2 satellites over the location Bangalore, India (Grid: MK83SC) and decoded the same to obtain real time images as seen by the satellite. The images obtained were further analyzed for rough weather predictions over the above mentioned location.