# An Overview of CubeSat Missions and Applications
## 4 The Use of CubeSats as Telecommunication and Asset-Monitoring Platforms
### Radio Communication CubeSat Technologies
One notable example of an upcoming NB 5G IoT CubeSat constellation is the Sateliot\(\_\)X (Sateliot, Barcelona, Spain) constellation which is planned to encompass at least 108 satellites within the next four years, eventually reaching a total of at least 250 individual satellites and in doing so, provide global 5G IoT service coverage that will complement the existing terrestrial networks. The 5G IoT service offered by the Sateliot\(\_\)X constellation is expected to be utilized for asset monitoring and data analysis applications in a variety of fields such as railway, aircraft, and maritime transportation, precision agriculture, as well as the oil and energy industries [156; 157]. CubeSat platforms may also utilize communications-related equipment to enable asset surveillance applications, with notable examples being marine and air traffic monitoring. The principal advantage of space-based surveillance systems compared to ground-based ones is the ability of the former to provide coverage over remote areas of the planet such as its oceans, deserts, mountains, as well as its polar regions. Marine-traffic monitoring takes place using Automatic Identification System (AIS) receivers and antennas designed to operate in the VHF frequency band (namely at the 156.775 MHz, 156.825 MHz, 161.975 MHz, and 162.025 MHz frequencies) which are used to broadcast information such as a ship's identity, position, speed, and course to other ships as well as to coastal stations. Air-traffic monitoring, on the other hand, is performed using Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) systems which operate at UHF frequencies, namely 978 MHz or 1090 MHz, and are used periodically to transmit data about an aircraft's identity, intent, position, velocity, and flight altitude towards Air-Traffic-Control and other ADS-B equipped platforms [158; 159; 160]. As of 2025, a variety of commercial solutions regarding space-based AIS and ADS-B applications are available. Some examples of COTS AIS solutions for CubeSat applications include Alen Space's AIS receiver payload [161], as well as the Polaris and QubeAIS receivers which are developed by Satlab A/S (Aalborg, Denmark) [162; 163]. On the other hand, for ADS-B applications, there are COTS solutions like GomSpace's NanoCom ANTI090-P compact ADS-B patch antenna [164], Alen Space's (Vigo, Spain) ADS-B receiver payload [165],and the Sattab A/S Polaris ADS-B receiver [166]. Custom-made and in-house developed solutions have also been utilized historically. To this day, a variety of completed and ongoing CubeSat missions have been dedicated to AIS and ADS-B applications. An example among the first CubeSat missions dedicated to AIS applications is the Canadian Advanced Nanosatellite eXperiment-6 (CanX-6), a non-standardized 6.5 kg, 200 mm \(\times\) 200 mm \(\times\) 200 mm CubeSat developed by the Space Flight Laboratory of the University of Toronto under the mission of demonstrating space-based AIS hardware [167; 168; 169]. The same non-standard CubeSat architecture was also used in the case of the AISSAT-1 and -2 missions which were managed by the Norwegian Space Centre [170; 171]. Other examples of AIS CubeSat missions include AAUSat-3, AAUSat-4, and AAUSat-5 which were developed by Aalborg University [172; 173; 174; 175]. On the other hand, the first CubeSat mission to revolve around ADS-B technologies was the GomSpace Express-1 (GomX-1), a 2U CubeSat jointly developed by GomSpace, DSE Airport Solutions, and Aalborg University which aimed to demonstrate and evaluate Software Defined Radio (SDR) operations aimed at receiving ADS-B signals from commercial aircraft over the oceans [176]. Another example of an ADS-B CubeSat mission is the GomSpace Express-3 (GomX-3), a 3U CubeSat which was developed and operated by GomSpace with the aim of demonstrating precise 3-axis attitude control, high-speed downlink SDR, and improved ADS-B technologies [177].