Distributed wind measurements with multiple quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles in the atmospheric boundary layer

In this study, a fleet of quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is presented as a system to measure the spatial distribution of atmospheric boundary layer flow. The big advantage of this approach is that multiple and flexible measurement points in space can be sampled synchronously. The algorithm to obtain horizontal wind speed and direction is designed for hovering flight phases and is based on the principle of aerodynamic drag and the related quadrotor dynamics. During the FESST@MOL campaign at the boundary layer field site (Grenzschichtmessfeld, GM) Falkenberg of the Lindenberg Meteorological Observatory - Richard Assmann Observatory (MOL-RAO), 76 calibration and validation flights were performed. The 99 m tower equipped with cup and sonic anemometers at the site is used as the reference for the calibration of the wind measurements. The validation with an independent dataset against the tower anemometers reveals that an average accuracy of <0.3 m/s for the wind speed and