Microcontroller-based electric field measurement system with programmable pre-amplifier and filtering for use in the Amazon region

This paper presents a low-cost system to detect and store lightning waveforms in VLF (3–30khz) or ELF (3–3000Hz) frequencies. The name of the system is: Lightning Detection and Waveforms Storage System (LDWSS). The system consists of a whip antenna with a fully-programmable pre-amplifier and filtering circuit and a microcontroller to process the signal and send the data to a computer where it will be stored and analyzed in the future. A comparison of waveforms stored by the system with those found in the literature and comparisons between the quantity of the detected events and the meteorological conditions for that interval were carried out. Preliminary tests have shown the LDWS to be a promising system for research of lightning in the Amazon.