Low Power and Miniaturized Back-End Processing System for an L-Band Radiometer based on ARM Embedded Microprocessor

Abstract

This paper presents the design and construction of an ultra-low power and miniaturized back end system for processing real-time L-band radiometric data based on an ARM A8 embedded microprocessor. In the worst-case scenario, the power consumption has been measured at only 1.7 W and the size of the radiometer has been significantly reduced to a 30cm x 30cm x 10cm. The system was tested for different integration times, and high-level software optimizations were applied to the main program written in C, running on an embedded Linux OS to reduce the power even more, down to 1.52 W. This technological breakthrough will allow these systems to become portable, low cost, and be carried by small drones to scan a large area.