Reducing Onboard Power Consumption in CubeSats via Adaptive Telemetry and Monitoring

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Christoforos Vasilakis, Alexandros Tsagkaropoulos, Angelos Motsios, Panagiotis Karathanasis, Christos Tsigkanos, Dionysios I. Reisis

Published: 2025, Last Modified: 20 Mar 2026ACSOS-C 2025EveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY-SA 4.0
Abstract: Effective power management is key to CubeSat systems, where energy availability is inherently limited. Aiming at improving the overall satellite's power consumption, this paper introduces an adaptive mechanism that lessens the power requirements of the telemetry and health monitoring functions typical in spacecraft. The proposed technique distinguishes the idle and active mission periods to autonomously adjust sampling rates and monitored parameters. Moreover, it saves power by narrowing required communication for ground station commands. Implementation in the ERMIS3 CubeSat demonstrates efficiency of the proposed approach, while preliminary results show a $\text{4 4 \%}$ reduction in telemetry-related power usage compared to conventional methods.