High-frequency sensor data acquisition system (SDAC) for flight control and aerodynamic data collection

This paper describes a high-frequency sensor data acquisition system (SDAC) for flight control and aerodynamic data collection research on small to mid-sized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The system is both low weight and low power, operates at 100 Hz and features: a high-frequency, high-resolution six degree-offreedom (6-DOF) inertial measurement unit (IMU) with a global positioning system (GPS) receiver, a 3-axis magnetometer, a pitot probe, seven 10-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADC), sixteen 12-bit analog-to-digital converters, a 14-bit analog-to-digital converter, twenty digital input/outputs (I/O), eight pulse width modulation (PWM) signal inputs, a 40 mile downlink transceiver, an open serial and an open CANbus port, and up to 64 GB of onboard storage. The data acquisition system was completely fabricated from commercial-off-theshelf (COTS) components, which reduced the system cost and implementation time. The SDAC combines the large variety of sensor streams into a unified high-fidelity state data stream that is recorded for later aerodynamics analysis and simultaneously forwarded to a separate processing unit, such as an autopilot.