Planning for a Community UAS Sensor Calibration Facility

The National Center for Atmospheric Research Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL) proposes to develop a facility to support small UAS sensor testing. The planned EOL UAS sensor facility has two main goals for evaluation of the uncertainties of users’ UAS sensors in EOL’s Calibration Laboratory and a field facility for data validation for flight-testing.

Calibration of sensors, proper placement on UAS and validation against recognized standards remains a challenge. There is a need to evaluate the performance of sensors in the laboratory and in actual use on air-vehicles.

All high-quality sensors require traceable calibration to specified uncertainties. The UAS community could greatly benefit from access to calibration facilities for temperature, pressure, humidity, wind, radiation, and certain trace gases. Validation against recognized standards can be done using reference sensors on tall towers, which are easy to operate during validation campaigns, have well-established uncertainties and may be the preferred choice for validation of UAS sensors. The sensor measurement uncertainty is also influenced by the behavior of the exposure to the atmosphere on the moving platform.

EOL has expertise in the development, calibration and field deployment of in-situ sensors through the EOL Integrated Surface Flux System (ISFS) and EOL maintains a calibration lab for the evaluation and calibration of in-situ meteorological sensors. The laboratory has the capability to simulate the full range of pressure, temperature, and humidity to which meteorological sensors are normally exposed. Pressure, humidity, and temperature references are traceable to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, primary standards. The use of 30 meter self-erecting portable free standing towers with no guys with reference in-situ sensors is planned to be available at the NCAR Marshall Field site for flight inter-comparison or available for potential field deployments.