A Fast Storage Method for Drone-Borne Passive Microwave Radiation Measurement

Area of Science:

• Electrical Engineering
• Aerospace Engineering
• Data Storage Technologies

Background:

• Drone-borne microwave radiometers require high-frequency, continuous data acquisition for radio frequency interference (RFI) detection and mitigation.
• Existing data storage methods are insufficient for handling the large data volumes generated by these instruments.
• This limitation hinders effective RFI analysis and mitigation strategies in airborne remote sensing applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and validate a new data storage method, the dual polling write method (DPSM), for high-speed, continuous data acquisition.
• To address the limitations of existing storage techniques in meeting the demands of drone-borne microwave radiometers.
• To enable efficient data logging for RFI detection and mitigation in real-time airborne scenarios.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of a dual polling write method (DPSM) for secure digital cards.
• Utilized a multitask framework based on STM32 microcontroller (MCU) with timer-triggered operations.
• Modified the card programming structure from query waiting to polling query flag bits, employing time-sharing and parallel processing to simulate multithreading.

Main Results:

• Reduced the overall storage procedure time from 4000 microseconds to 200-400 microseconds.
• Significantly decreased card programming time: from 3000 µs (first block) and 1000 µs (subsequent blocks) to 17-174 µs and 18-71 µs, respectively.
• Eliminated delay in the entire sampling cycle, reducing it from 3942 microseconds to 0 microseconds.

Conclusions:

• The proposed DPSM effectively meets the stringent data storage requirements of drone-borne microwave radiometers.
• The method enables high-speed, continuous data acquisition crucial for RFI detection and mitigation.
• DPSM is a viable solution for high-speed data storage in other demanding applications beyond airborne radiometry.