Impact of High Level Optimizations on Power Consumption and Performance of a Small L-Band Total Power Radiometer

Power consumption is a critical constraint in the design of small radiometers for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) applications. While high-level optimizations can be used as an option to reduce the power consumption of the processing system, some optimizations can adversely affect the performance. These methods need to be analyzed statistically to reach strong conclusions about their real impact in the reduction of power consumption and the performance. In this work, Design of Experiments techniques (DoE) and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to evaluate the impact of optimizations in the power consumption and the system performance. In addition, validation experiments through controlled salinity measurements are presented. Results showed that not all optimizations have a significant effect on the algorithm execution time.