Development of Coherent, Expandable, Reconfigurable Instrument Node (ERIN) for Web Sensor Applications

Microwave radars operating over the L-band microwave spectrum are often used as sensors for estimation of vegetation biomass, land surface topography and surface deformation, surface soil moisture, and polar ice sheets thickness. Monitoring of these parameters is essential for gauging the Earth´s ecosystem. Because of restriction on the mass and size of a radar sensor that can be deployed on a small aircraft/spacecraft, the surface resolution with which these essential earth parameters can be improved using this technology by forming interferometric baselines between nodes. The expandable reconfigurable instrument node (ERIN) will provide a semi-closed loop system solution for a variety of sensors. The ERIN baselines a reconfigurable processing technology with required memory to allow on-board processing of science data. Standardized interfaces are provided to allow for interfacing to attitude control instrumentation such as global positioning systems (GPS) and inertial measurement units (IMU). A communications device will be added to the node that would allow for node-to-node communications.