On-board biophysical parameters estimation using high performance computing

Jetson TK1 is the first mobile processor from NVIDIA having similar features and architecture as that of a modern desktop GPU and still using low power from a mobile chip. Therefore, Jetson TK1 runs the same CUDA code (running on desktop GPU) with similar level of performance. Also, with the dawn of GPU technology, it has become possible to perform tasks (that are computationally intensive) in realtime or near-real time. In the agricultural domain, retrieving the biophysical parameters of the crop is important as it provides insights into the plant growth status. Inversion of the Radiative Transfer Model enables to obtain these parameters. However, such a process is highly computationally intensive. The focus of this work is to develop and implement an approach that takes the advantage of embedded High-Performance Computing (HPC) capability of Jetson TK1 to significantly improve the inversion process of a Radiative Transfer Model. The experimental results show that Jetson TK1 based biophysical parameters estimation gives significant speedup, which opens-up the possibility of having a Jetson based embedded platform for on-board biophysical parameters estimation in the future. In such a scenario, where there are constraints related to energy and power, Jetson TK1 can become a practicable option by providing a GPU based architecture for running energy-aware computationally intensive algorithms in parallel for processing the data, and generating the results in real-time or near-real time while taking care of the power usage.