Advanced Hybrid Energy Harvesting Systems for Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAVs)

Abstract

The recent use of rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has gained significant interest and continuously been implemented since they are used across the world for civilian, commercial, as well as military applications. The drawback of UAVs is the fight-time due to the limited battery capacity. Therefore, energy harvesting (EH), captured energy from the ambient environment is one of the effective measures to prolong the flight time for UAVs. This paper proposes the hybrid EH system, which can simultaneously harvest power from solar and radio frequency (RF) energy sources to significantly improve the energy issues for endurance longer flight UAVs. A 7-stage voltage multiplier circuit of the stand-alone RF-EH system is designed and simulated in this work. The stand-alone solar harvester is a solar panel. The DC output voltage from both of two energy sources is passed through a DC-DC boost converter and stabilizer. Simulation results can be deployed to power for the battery of UAVs in practice.

Formation Control Algorithms for Multiple-UAVs: A Comprehensive Survey

“…Therefore, the stability of the system is difficult to be analyzed. The control given by the Artificial Potential Field protocol could quickly provide 9 EAI Endorsed Transactions on Industrial Networks and Intelligent Systems Online First a smooth trajectory when the UAVs avoid obstacles or collisions. However, this protocol does not guarantee shortest paths.…”

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“…When UAVs do not use any alternative energy sources from the ambient environment, they may fail to several tasks due to the limited operating time and the sustainable sources of power are considered as an effective solution [32]. Several studies [33], [34], [35] propose multiple charging stations distributed optimally in urban areas to allow UAVs to recharge their batteries when needed.…”

“…To make LFAUAVs and FAUAVs complete their mission efficiently, their batteries need to be recharged during their long-range flight on their way without any considerable delay. Nguyen et al [32] propose the hybrid EH system, which can simultaneously harvest power from solar and RF energy sources for longer UAV flights. A project developed by Chen et al [44] present an automatic and high-efficient wireless power transfer (WPT) using inductive coupling to supply UAVs with a distance of 12 cm where the voltage increases within closer ranges: A WPT kit can charge 3S 1500 mAh Li-Po battery with up to 1000 mAh automatically once UAVs are landed, without manual operation and 24V DC is supplied to the transmitting side of WPT with the operating frequency at 180kHz and once the battery is fully charged, the charging process also stops automatically.…”

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“…An alternative solution would consist of a scenario where the UAVs return to a predefined base station for battery replacement when their battery level is low. However, in addition to requesting a huge amount of time, it could be impractical due to the cost and complexity of these systems [25][26][27].…”