The trend of miniaturization of components has resulted in smaller satellites becoming more versatile, smart and efficient. Together with recent advances in rocket technology, this has cut the cost of launching working devices into orbit, even making space available to public enterprise. Among nanosatellites, particular prominence is taken by CubeSats. These exhibit a standardized modular structure, thus allowing essential parts such as solar panels, batteries or processor boards to be developed as COTS components. The tight spaces and cheap components make the EMC of the system a delicate and critical issue, while at the same time there is pressure to reduce testing efforts by component manufacturers. Typical levels of radiated and conducted emissions from the boards are still unknown. Some peculiarities of the CubeSat structure, such as the low presence of wiring harness or the tight stacking of PCBs, make measuring these emissions a challenging task. Moreover, also the relationship between the emissions and the susceptibility of nearby boards is yet undefined. The proposed research activity aims to obtain simple EMC specifications for CubeSat components starting from the measurement of emissions from commonly used parts, such as processing boards, and to develop ad hoc test set-ups and procedures in the frequency and time domain. This also requires building a model for numerical simulation that must use a statistical approach. Indeed, the same component should be cleared for use in multiple CubeSats that may slightly differ in functions or payloads. Therefore, the final EMC requirements should account for different possible choices of layouts, component orientation, tolerances, scientific payloads and so on. In this way, simplified and standardized testing procedures will be obtained, reducing complexity for component manufacturers and, ultimately, costs and time in the construction and design phases of CubeSat production.
