A Cost-effective Microcontroller-based Iridium Satellite Communication Architecture for a Remote Renewable Energy Source

The Iridium Satellite System (ISS) is able to provide global communication. Distributed Generation (DG) dispatchibility requires collection and transfer of data from the field as well as monitoring and potentially remote control of the generators. Hence, this research develops a low-cost architecture and studies the feasibility of utilizing the ISS, which has Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites, with a 9601 Short Burst Data (SBD) transceiver for data communications.;A cost-effective microcontroller-based Iridium SBD satellite communication architecture is developed. Optimization of the telemetry data per SBD session is done to make the system more cost effective. The system is tested and the end-to-end time delay aspect of the data transmission is studied and recommendations drawn on the usability of the developed communication system for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) for a Remote Renewable Energy Source (RRES) for its monitoring, maintenance and dispatchability.