Multi-Mode Multi-Source Electrical Power Subsystem Design for CubeSats-Internet of Things Missions

Ekpo, Sunday Cookey ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9219-3759, Elias, Fanuel, Uko, Mfonobong Charles, Sunday, Enahoro, Stephen, Alabi, Ijaz, Muhammad ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0050-9435 and Unnikrishnan, Rahul (2025) Multi-Mode Multi-Source Electrical Power Subsystem Design for CubeSats-Internet of Things Missions. IEEE Access. pp. 1-20. (In Press)

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Abstract

The need to extend the global coverage of mobile communication operators in 100 percent of the earth has accelerated the launches of 5G narrowband (NB)- internet of things (IoTs) non-terrestrial network (NTN) constellations of low-earth orbit (LEO) nanosatellites. Space-borne low-power IoTs sensors are power-hungry at highly variable rates during mission operations. The total energy reserve of the CubeSat-IoTs system is 24 hours premium resource constrained by the small satellite’s solar eclipse regime(s). With the conventional heavy and rigid silicon-based solar technology design reaching its efficiency, use cases, and application limits, perovskite photovoltaic (PPV) solar cells have emerged as a worthy alternative. PPV’s flexible and lightweight properties, cost-effective silicon panels’ efficiency-boosting capability, and comparably cheaper production cost have attracted substantial commercial and scientific interests worldwide. To eliminate this problem, we propose a hybrid multiband radio frequency-perovskite photovoltaic energy harvester to sustain the constellation and/or clusters of CubeSat-IoTs systems operations anytime, anywhere, and optimise power supply equipment sizing and thermal reliability evaluation. This paper presents a multisource multimode radio frequency-perovskite photovoltaic energy harvester development at the conceptual design phase of a CubeSat mission. This is supported by an experimental measurement of the actual power consumption of a field programmable gates array (FPGA) device in a typical CubeSat mission’s digital design implementation. The power estimate is as close to the value obtained at the system integration phase. The results show that the FPGA device’s quiescent (static) power consumptions at 50 and 100 MHz are 78 mW and 79 mW, respectively. Hybrid adaptive beamformed massive multiple-input-multiple-output heterogeneous cellular network (mMIMO-HetNets) green energy transmission and harvesting promise to address the small form factor (size, weight, power and cost) requirements and/or constraints of future sustainable small satellite missions in the LEO. The energy efficiency savings of the proposed multimode multiband RF-PPV energy harvesting and transmission system for the METCubeSat-IoTs mission is 0.23 Gb/J. This has enabled an energy budget balance for the operational space-borne devices with a multi-source N-power mode of operation to be developed for green 5G/6G/Wi-Fi and future-generation satellite-cellular convergence ecosystem and CubeSat-IoTs missions.