Modular Approach to Carbon Dioxide Sensor Integration across Rotary and Fixed Wing UAV

Over the past few years, the Center for Autonomous Sensing and Sampling (CASS) at the University of Oklahoma (OU) has been successfully deploying custom-built unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to measure and characterize the thermodynamic and kinematic structures of the planetary boundary layer (PBL). As the platform designs have matured and proven capable of delivering reliable measurements, members of the CASS team have turned their focus to other types of measurements suitable for UAS, namely sampling spatially and temporally resolved carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations in the lower atmosphere.

In hopes of creating a standardized measurement system, CASS has developed and modularized a sensor suite for temperature and relative humidity integrated to the UAS’s autopilot system and GPS. Such integration provides a single source of timestamp and position for any data point acquired and ensures data comparability across platforms. Here we present the challenges faced and solutions adopted to integrate a fast response non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) CO₂ sensor (SenseAir K30) to the current UAV-mounted sensor suite, while expanding its modularity to allow data comparability across platform types (rotary- and fixed-wing aircraft). We conclude by comparing preliminary results of data acquired during the Lower Atmospheric Process Studies at Elevation a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment, in San Luis Valley, CO and during the OU Kessler Atmospheric and Ecological Field Station campaigns in Washington, Oklahoma, to non-integrated data acquired during the Innovative Strategies for Observations in the Arctic Atmospheric Boundary Layer campaign in Hailuoto, Finland.