Characterization of a COTSBased RF Receiver for Cubesat Applications This paper reports the experimental results of a test campaign performed on the radiofrequency (RF) receiver prototype operating at a 2025xe2x80x932110 MHz frequency range, designed and fabricated for CubeSat applications. The prototype has been tested through a boardlevel test approach for the verification of the functional requirements and a componentlevel one for specific characterization measures. The tests have shown the following results: a xe2x88x92115xe2x80x93xe2x88x9270 dBm sensitivity range, 390 MHz intermediate frequency, a 0 dBm output power level with xc2xb11 dB error, a 2.34 dB noise figure, and a 4.86 W power absorption. Such results have been largely achieved implementing an automatic gain control system by cascading two Commercial OffTheShelf (COTS) amplifiers. Moreover, an innovative technique based on RF test points has been successfully experimented and validated to measure the Sparameters of a custom lowpass filter integrated on the receiver, showing the possibility of even characterizing the single COTS components exposed to radiation through a unique boardlevel test setup. The technique may have a great impact on the cost reduction of electronic boards for space applications, since it would avoid using expensive evaluation boards for each COTS component that needs a radiation test.

Low Cost Signal Reconstruction Based Testing of RF Components using Incoherent Undersampling To meet the testing requirements of high speed components used in modern communication systems, in an efficient and cost effective manner, it is necessary to develop new device performance measurement techniques that are easily scalable to high frequencies. Traditional updown conversion based transmitter testing architectures are sensitive to the linearity of the mixers and carrier phase noise in the receiver. Direct undersampling based test instrumentation can overcome the limitations imposed by mixers in updown conversion. A major challenge in direct undersampling based test architecture is to achieve precise phase alignment between different components of the test setup. Such phase alignment of high frequency signals requires the use of expensive test instruments adding to the cost and complexity of the overall test system. To resolve this problem, an incoherent undersampling based test method is developed in this research that eliminates the need for precise phase synchronization between the RF test signal carrier, its amplitudemodulated envelope (generally necessary for measuring amplifier nonlinearity) and the reference sampling clock. A sidebenefit, due to the use of signal undersampling, is that signal acquisition is achieved without the use of a Nyquist rate data converter. Multiple RF performance metrics are extracted without the use of a reference receiver. The accuracy of the proposed setup is compared against existing coherent sampling based test setups.