RTL-SDR for Satellite Weather – GOES16 – Telecommunications, Navigation & Electronics

Introduction

Four years ago I was able to receive signals from GOES16, a geostationary weather satellite located at 75.2degW (Ref.1/6). I used goestools on RaspberryPi4B. In the last post I decoded signals from Meteor M2-3/4 using SatDump. I noticed that this program also handled GOES. So I setup my dish again and was able to receive signals, even with all the new condo construction. Amazingly still an open path to the satellite. Note GOES16 has recently been replaced as GOES19 for GOES EAST (Ref.7).

Equipment Setup

Figure 1 shows the equipment setup. An L band dish receives at 1694.1MHz and sends signals to a GOES BPF/LNA and then to an E4000 RTL-SDR. Reception is by SDR# (Fs=2.4Msps/Gain=29dB). The RTL-SDR has a biasTee which feeds 5VDC to the BPF/LNA module. Signals are saved as baseband IQ for later decoding using SatDump.

Signal Reception

Fig.2 GOES16 HRIT Rx Signal at L Band 1694.1MHz

Fig.4 SatDump Processng Baseband IQ File

Figure 2 shows SDR# playing back a saved baseband IQ file. The dish is adjusted by hand to give a maximum SNR by viewing the top of the signal spectrum and the noise floor. This varied between 5-7dB as there was a lot of wind and the dish mount was not very stable. Figure 3 shows the SatDump Offline Processing Screen where you open the IQ file and select an output directory for the results. Figure 4 shows SatDump processing the file.