Abstract
A wireless, compact (8 × 8 × 11 cm3) and lightweight (<1 kg) gamma-ray spectrometer featuring a 2″ CsI scintillator readout by silicon photomultipliers and microcontroller data acquisition is operated on board of a prosumer drone with 25 min of flight time. It provides 50 kcps count rate, 8% energy resolution (662 keV) and a full scale range up to 1.7 MeV. Thanks to the affordability of the solution, a swarm of drones could be deployed for versatile environmental monitoring of radioactivity and identification of radionuclides.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Carminati, M., Turolla, A., Mezzera, L., Di Mauro, M., Tizzoni, M., Pani, G., Zanetto, F., Foschi, J., Antonelli, M.: A self-powered wireless water quality sensing network enabling smart monitoring of biological and chemical stability in supply systems. Sensors 20(4), 1125 (2020)
Carminati, M., Ferrari, G., Sampietro, M.: Emerging miniaturized technologies for airborne particulate matter pervasive monitoring. Measurement 101, 250–256 (2017)
Carminati, M., Kanoun, O., Ullo, S.L., Marcuccio, S.: Prospects of distributed wireless sensor networks for urban environmental monitoring. IEEE Aerosp. Electron. Syst. Mag. 34(6), 44–52 (2019)
Connor, D., Martin, P.G., Scott, T.B.: Airborne radiation mapping: overview and application of current and future aerial systems. Int. J. Remote Sens. 37(24), 5953–5987 (2016)
Corbo, M., Morichi, M., Fanchini, E., Mini, G., Pepperosa, A., Mangiagalli, G.: Modular and integrated sensor network of intelligent radiation monitor systems for radiological and nuclear threat response. EPJ Web Conf. 225, 07005 (2020)
Di Stefano, G., Romeo, G., Mazzini, A., Iarocci, A., Hadi, S., Pelphrey, S.: The Lusi drone: a multidisciplinary tool to access extreme environments. Mar. Pet. Geol. 90, 26–37 (2018)
Aleotti, J., Micconi, G., Caselli, S., Benassi, G., Zambelli, N., Bettelli, M., Zappettini, A.: Detection of nuclear sources by UAV teleoperation using a visuo-haptic augmented reality interface. Sensors 17(10), 2234 (2017)
Sato, Y., Ozawa, S., Terasaka, Y., Kaburagi, M., Tanifuji, Y., Kawabata, K., Miyamura, H.N., Izumi, R., Suzuki, T., Torii, T.: Remote radiation imaging system using a compact gamma-ray imager mounted on a multicopter drone. J. Nucl. Sci. Technol. 55(1), 90–96 (2018)
Montagnani, G.L., Carminati, M., Lavelli, E., Morandi, G., Rizzacasa, P., Fiorini, C.: SiPM-based scrap metal radioactivity detector embeddable in lifting electromagnets. In: 2018 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference Proceedings (NSS/MIC), 1–3 (2018)
Mochizuki, S., Kataoka, J., Tagawa, L., Iwamoto, Y., Okochi, H., Katsumi, N., Kinno, S., Arimoto, M., Maruhashi, T., Fujieda, K., Kurihara, T., Ohsuka, S.: First demonstration of aerial gamma-ray imaging using drone for prompt radiation survey in Fukushima. J. Inst. 12(11), P11014–P11014 (2017)
Buonanno, L., Di Vita, D., Carminati, M., Fiorini, C.: A Directional Gamma-Ray Spectrometer with Microcontroller-Embedded Machine Learning. IEEE J. Emerg. Sel. Topics Circuits Syst. 10(4), 433–443 (2020)
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the following people: Emanuele Lavelli and Luca Lorusso past master students at Politecnico di Milano, TNE Nuclear Electronics (Italy) who partially supported the development of the instrument and Gianluca Passarella who professionally tuned and piloted the drone.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Carminati, M., Di Vita, D., Buonanno, L., Montagnani, G.L., Fiorini, C. (2021). A Lightweight SiPM-Based Gamma-Ray Spectrometer for Environmental Monitoring with Drones. In: Saponara, S., De Gloria, A. (eds) Applications in Electronics Pervading Industry, Environment and Society. ApplePies 2020. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 738. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66729-0_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66729-0_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-66728-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-66729-0
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)