UAV IC

I. High-Capacity Image/Video Storage (Most Common)

1. Micro SD / TF Cards (External Storage)

Standard configuration for consumer drones: DJI, Feimi, and Daotong aerial photography drones

Specifications: U3 V30 / V60 / V90 A2 high-speed cards

Function: Stores 4K/8K aerial videos, RAW photos, and flight logs

Storage medium: NAND Flash (TLC/MLC)

2. eMMC Embedded Flash Storage (Mainstream Onboard Local Storage)

Built into nearly all drone flight controllers, video transmitters, and gimbal cameras

Capacity: 8GB/16GB/32GB/64GB/128GB

Advantages: Shock-resistant, wide temperature range, high integration, no risk of damage from insertion/removal

Uses: Local video caching, offline maps, flight logs, firmware backups

Grade: Industrial-grade wide-temperature eMMC (-40°C to 85°C) for industrial/military drones

3. UFS High-Speed Storage (High-End Flagship Aerial Photography and Surveying Drones)

Next-generation high-end gimbal cameras and all-in-one HD video transmission systems

UFS 2.1 / UFS 3.1, with read/write speeds far exceeding those of eMMC

Applications: Real-time storage of 8K RAW, 4K thermal infrared, and laser point cloud data

II. Small-Capacity Flash Storage for Firmware, Parameters, and Logs

1. SPI NOR Flash (Essential for Flight Controller Cores)

Standard in all flight controller MCUs; small capacity, fast read speeds, and extremely high reliability

Capacity: 4Mb/8Mb/16Mb/32Mb/64Mb

Function: Stores flight controller firmware and calibration parameters (gyroscope, IMU, ESC calibration, GPS offset), and boots the bootloader

Advantages: Data is not lost during power loss; withstands high and low temperatures; vibration-resistant; widely used in military and agricultural drones

2. SPI NAND Flash

Medium-capacity firmware cache; reduces costs by replacing high-capacity NOR

Capacity: 128Mb–2Gb

Purpose: Stores offline map data packages, aerial survey flight path files, and multiple firmware version backups

3. QSPI Flash (High-Speed NOR)

High-end flight controllers and onboard edge computing motherboards; enables high-speed boot

Read/write speeds exceed those of standard SPI NOR; used in drones with AI vision (target recognition, obstacle avoidance)

III. High-Speed Cache Storage (Temporary Computation Cache; Data Lost Upon Power Loss)

1. LPDDR / LPDDR4X / LPDDR5 (Onboard RAM)

RAM for drone main controllers, vision AI modules, and video transmission SoCs

Consumer drones: LPDDR4X 2 GB/4 GB

Industrial surveying/inspection drones: 4 GB/8 GB LPDDR5

Purpose: Real-time image processing, AI obstacle avoidance algorithms, video encoding cache, video transmission data stream buffering

2. DDR3 / DDR4 (Onboard industrial control computing boards)

Large industrial drones, ground stations for tethered drones, onboard edge computing units