A design and implementation of a low-power embedded system for data collection in an airborne sea ice thickness observing system

• Main Author: Asurapmudalige, Thimira Sanuka Thilakarathna
• Other Authors: Raskovic, Dejan, Hatfield, Micheal, Thorsen, Denise
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Sea ice; Arctic Regions; Master of Science in Electrical Engineering; Arctic; Fairbanks; Alaska
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11122/13112

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2022 The Long-Range Airborne Snow and Sea Ice Thickness Observing System (LASSITOS) is an airborne electromagnetic (AEM) system, currently under development, which uses a customdesigned instrument mounted on an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) to measure Arctic sea ice and snow thickness. This project requires specialized instruments that are both low-power and lightweight. This thesis describes a design and implementation of a prototype data logging system based on an ultra-low power microcontroller, for the LASSITOS instrument. Three 32-bit Analog-toDigital Converter (ADC) integrated circuits (IC) are used to sample and convert the receiving EM signal at a rate of 19200 SPS. The system is capable of writing the sampled data and diagnostic data to the SD card at a combined rate of up to 307200 B/s. A 30 KB circular buffer is used to avoid data loss during SD card busy periods. Three DMA channels are used to optimize the communication between the ADCs and the SD card over SPI to achieve these data rates.