TinyGS vs. SatNOGS: a comparative analysis of open-source satellite ground station networks

In recent years, two of the largest open-source ground station (GS) networks capable of enabling Earth–satellite communication have emerged: TinyGS and SatNOGS. These open-source projects enable anyone to build their own GS inexpensively and easily, integrate into a GS network, and receive data from satellites listed in the database. Additionally, it enables satellite developers to add satellites to the databases of these projects and take advantage of this GS network to receive data from the satellites. This article introduces the TinyGS and SatNOGS projects and conducts a comparative analysis between them. Generally, the TinyGS project seems to have simpler implementation as well as lower associated costs. In a deeper analysis, it was observed that on the 29 July 2023, the TinyGS project had a higher number of online GSs and a more favorable geographic distribution. On the other hand, the SatNOGS project managed to communicate and decode a larger number of satellites up to 29 July 2023. Additionally, in both projects, it was noted that frequencies between 436 and 437 had the highest number of satellites with decoded data. Ultimately, the choice between these projects depends on critical parameters defined by the reader. This research was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia under the project “PROMETHEUS—PocketQube Framework Designed for Research and Educational Access to Space” (ref. CMU/TIC/0017/2021), under the CMU Portugal Program, and was supported by FCT national funds, under the national support to R&D units grant, through the reference project UIDB/04436/2020 and UIDP/04436/2020.