Design, Development, and Initial Testing of a Computationally-Intensive, Long-Endurance Solar-Powered Unmanned Aircraft

Dantsker, Or D.; Theile, Mirco; Caccamo, Marco; Mancuso, Renato

doi:10.2514/6.2018-4217

Cited by 17 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…While numerous studies [9][10][11][12] discuss the design and performance of solar-powered aircraft, most focus on aeronautics. A few studies [13,14] consider solar cell energy harvesting in relation to solar-powered aircraft.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the most popular energy consumption models for a terrestrial BS was proposed by the Energy Aware Radio and neTwork tecHnologies (EARTH) project as a framework to evaluate the energy efficiency of a BS. The energy efficiency evaluation framework (E3F) computes LTE terrestrial BS power consumption as the summation of the individual power consumption of the baseband unit (BBU), radio frequency (RF) chains, power amplifiers (PA) and overhead [10,19]. The model is a function of bandwidth, the number of antennas, modulation scheme, traffic load factor, etc.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

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Energy Management of Solar-Powered Aircraft-Based High Altitude Platform for Wireless Communications

et al. 2020

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With the increasing interest in wireless communications from solar-powered aircraft-based high altitude platforms (HAPs), it is imperative to assess the feasibility of their deployment in different locations with the constraints on energy consumption and payload weight under consideration. This paper considers the energy management of solar-powered aircraft-based HAPs for wireless communications service provisioning in equatorial regions and regions further up the northern hemisphere. The total solar energy harvested and consumed on the shortest day of the year is analyzed, and it is explained how this determines the feasibility of long endurance, semi-permanent missions. This takes into account the different aircraft-based HAPs and the energy storage systems currently available, and how these can be deployed for wireless communications. We show that the solar-powered HAPs are energy and weight limited, and this depends largely on the platform’s wingspan available for the deployment of solar collectors. Our analysis show that services can be provided for a duration of 15–24 h/day using current platforms, with wingspans ranging between 25–35 m, depending on the configuration and coverage radius. Furthermore, we show that doubling an aircraft’s wingspan can increase its payload capacity by a factor of 6, which in turn enhances its feasibility for wireless communications.

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Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Energy Management of Solar-Powered Aircraft-Based High Altitude Platform for Wireless Communications

et al. 2020

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“…3, will be used as example. The aircraft used for demonstration will include the UIUC Subscale Sukhoi , 5 the UIUC GA-USTAR , 85 and the UIUC Solar Flyer , 60,86 all of which are distinctly different types of aircraft and have different types of integration and operation challenges. Photos of the aircraft are shown below.…”

Section: Integration Casesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The UIUC Solar Flyer 60,86 is currently in development with the ultimate aim of sustaining continuous flight for extended periods of time while performing on-board, real-time computation and to shift the paradigm of solar powered flight. The traditional approach for small size UAVs, is to capture data on the aircraft, stream it to the ground through a high power data-link, process it remotely (potentially off-line), perform analysis, and then relay commands back to the aircraft as needed.…”

Section: Uiuc Solar Flyermentioning

confidence: 99%

Flight Data Acquisition Platform Development, Integration, and Operation on Small- to Medium-Sized Unmanned Aircraft

Dantsker¹,

Mancuso

2019

AIAA Scitech 2019 Forum

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Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are rapidly increasing in popularity for civilian, military, and research applications, and as part of this uptrend, significant effort has been undertaken to integrate an increasing amount of sensing into these vehicles. This sensing, or in other words, acquisition of sensor data, is part of the core functionality of UAVs-without the ability to sense, an unmanned aircraft is unable to function. By intelligently integrating sensors into a vehicle and properly interfacing with them, one is able to derive streams of data from these sensors, which allow the aircraft to fly and the desired mission to occur. In just the past several years, along with the uptrend in UAV use, there has been an increase in the research to evaluate and improve aircraft performance and flight characteristics. All of these efforts depend on the ability to acquire and utilize high fidelity data from a large range of sensors and devices. This paper will first provide an overview for the development of a data acquisition system. It will then focus on the design aspects involved including system architecture, sensing interfaces, common sensors, and user interface. Next, the paper will present a study of data acquisition systems and flight control systems that have been used in UAV research, with their specifications. Finally, avionics integration examples will be provided to demonstrate application in an unmanned aircraft.

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“…To truly enable a variety of applications, the overarching goal is to create a computationally-intensive, longendurance solar-powered unmanned aircraft that would carry a high-performance embedded computer system to perform all required computations online and only downlink final results, saving a significant amount of energy. Currently, such an aircraft is in development: UIUC Solar Flyer, 4,5 which is shown in Fig. 1.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Propulsion System Testing for a Long-Endurance Solar-Powered Unmanned Aircraft

Dantsker

Deters²,

Caccamo

2019

AIAA Aviation 2019 Forum

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The increase in popularity of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has been driven by their use in civilian, education, government, and military applications. However, limited on-board energy storage significantly limits flight time and ultimately usability. The propulsion system plays a critical part in the overall energy consumption of the UAV; therefore, it is necessary to determine the most optimal combination of possible propulsion system components for a given mission profile, i.e. propellers, motors, and electronic speed controllers (ESC). Hundreds of options are available for the different components with little performance specifications available for most of them. In order to determine the performance specifications, a propulsion system testing apparatus has been developed and validated. This testing apparatus was designed to measure the performance and efficiency parameters of electric propulsion system components (propellers, motors, and ESC) while maintaining similar air flow characteristics in either a wind tunnel or on a moving automotive platform. Validation tests of four propellers are presented. All four propellers were tested under static conditions, and two were tested under advancing flow conditions where the testing apparatus was used on an automotive platform. The results show that this propulsion testing system provides for holistic testing of all possible compatible electric propulsion system components in a flight-like environment. Data from this system will be used in a mission-based propulsion system optimizer, currently in development, to select the best combination of components for a long-endurance solar-powered unmanned aircraft.

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Design, Development, and Initial Testing of a Computationally-Intensive, Long-Endurance Solar-Powered Unmanned Aircraft

Cited by 17 publications

References 8 publications

Energy Management of Solar-Powered Aircraft-Based High Altitude Platform for Wireless Communications

Energy Management of Solar-Powered Aircraft-Based High Altitude Platform for Wireless Communications

Flight Data Acquisition Platform Development, Integration, and Operation on Small- to Medium-Sized Unmanned Aircraft

Propulsion System Testing for a Long-Endurance Solar-Powered Unmanned Aircraft

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