Building a Ground Station for Your CubeSat
You can build the finest CubeSat in the world, but if you can’t hear it, the mission is over the moment it leaves the deployer. A ground station is your half of the radio link — and the good news is that a capable one costs far less than most people expect. This guide covers everything you need on the ground.
The parts of a ground station
| Component | Job |
|---|---|
| Antenna | Captures the faint signal — usually a Yagi or a small dish. |
| Rotator | Points the antenna to track the satellite across the sky. |
| LNA | Low-noise amplifier at the antenna that sets your noise floor. |
| Receiver | An SDR or dedicated radio that demodulates the signal. |
| Computer + software | Predicts passes, drives the rotator, decodes telemetry. |
Antennas: Yagi vs dish
For the VHF/UHF amateur bands most CubeSats use, a cross-polarised Yagi is the workhorse: cheap, high enough gain (~12–16 dBi), and its circular polarisation copes with a tumbling satellite. Move up to S-band or higher and a small parabolic dishstarts to make sense. Match the antenna to your link budget — gain on the ground is often the cheapest way to close a marginal link.
To rotate or not to rotate
LEO satellites cross the sky in minutes, so a directional antenna needs an az/el rotator to track them. A fixed omni-directional antenna is simpler and needs no pointing, but has far less gain — fine for strong beacons, marginal for real data. Many first stations start fixed and add a rotator once they’re decoding reliably.
SDR vs LoRa: two routes in
A software-defined radio (SDR) — even a ~£30 RTL-SDR to start — turns your computer into a flexible receiver that can decode almost any modulation. It’s the most versatile option and the standard choice for serious stations.
LoRa is the other route: cheap, long-range modules that make a superb entry point if your satellite uses a LoRa radio. A LoRa ground node can cost under £50 and needs no rotator for basic reception. We publish full build recipes for both approaches on the ground station designs page.
Frequencies and licensing
Most university and hobby CubeSats operate in the amateur satellite bands(around 145 MHz and 435 MHz). To transmit you’ll need an amateur radio licence, and to fly an amateur payload you must coordinate your frequency with the IARUand get authorisation from your national regulator. Receiving is generally licence-free, so you can build and test a receive-only station while the paperwork is in progress.
Start receiving before you launch. Point your station at existing satellites (the ISS, NOAA weather birds, other CubeSats) to prove the whole chain works — antenna, LNA, SDR and decoding software — long before your own bird is overhead.
Software
You’ll need pass-prediction to know when your satellite is visible, rotator control to track it, and a decoder for your telemetry format. Plenty of mature open-source tools exist; pick ones that match your radio and modulation.
Ready to build? Our ground station designs page has complete parts lists, wiring and build guides for nine stations — SDR and LoRa — from a £50 starter node to a full tracking setup.
Design it for free in your browser
Defiant Smallsat is a free, all-in-one CubeSat & SmallSat design platform. Put this guide into practice — size your budgets, model your orbit and plan your mission without installing anything.