SMARTPHONE-FPGA BASED BALLOON PAYLOAD USING COTS COMPONENTS

Lisha .P. Gandhi, Himanshu S. Mazumdar

Abstract: This paper describes a low cost architecture of multi sensor remote sensing balloon payload design for prototyping student’s micro-satellite payload project. Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) components are being used to implement the payload instrumentation. COTS components provide high processing performance, low power consumption, high reliability, low cost and are easily available. The main architecture of the system consists of commercially available Smartphone, FPGA (fieldprogrammable gate-array) and microcontroller connected together along with sensors and telemetry systems. Presently available smart phones are combination of multiple advanced sensors, different communication channels, powerful operating system and multi-core processors with large non-volatile memory. This also supports high resolution imaging devices for remote sensing application. The smart phone is interfaced to a microcontroller to expand its I/O to interface sensors and FPGA. FPGA supported high speed onboard parallel processing needs and complex controls. Flexible configurations for data acquisition system is provided using built-in A/D converters, counters and timers available in FPGA and microcontroller. The proposed system is an experimental balloon payload for monitoring atmospheric parameters like temperature, humidity, air pollution etc. This can also monitor city traffic, agricultural field and city landscape for security and surveillance.

Keywords: Tethered Balloon, Sensors, Payload, Smartphone, FPGA, Microcontroller

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2015.0403094