Low-Power Ground Station Design for the TinyGS Platform Utilizing LoRaWAN Terrestrial Communications

This paper presents the design and implementation of an autonomous, low-power ground station optimized for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communication and long-range terrestrial data backhaul. Unlike conventional systems reliant on power-intensive WiFi or wired infrastructure, the proposed architecture utilizes LoRa technology for both satellite-to-ground reception and ground-to-server transmission. The system integrates the Simplified General Perturbations 4 (SGP4) orbital propagator for precise satellite trajectory prediction and is powered entirely by a solar energy harvesting unit. Experimental results demonstrate successful signal acquisition from various LEO satellites. With the optimized hardware design, the proposed system successfully captured nearly 5,000 packets from orbiting satellites, achieving a CRC error-free rate of over 62%. Furthermore, a detailed energy consumption analysis was performed to develop an adaptive duty-cycling algorithm. By dynamically balancing active and sleep modes based on real-time battery state-of-charge, the system ensures uninterrupted operational continuity even under suboptimal solar conditions. The findings suggest that this LoRa-centric approach offers a resilient, off-grid solution for remote satellite monitoring where traditional connectivity is unavailable.