Toroidal-Shaped Coils for a Wireless Power Transfer System for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) using communications, sensors, and navigation equipment will play a key role in future warfare. Currently, UAVs are monitored to prevent misfire and accidents, and the conventional method adopted uses wires for data transmission and power supply. The repeated connection and disconnection of cables increases maintenance time and harms the connector. For convenience and stability, a wireless power transfer system to power UAVs is needed. Unlike other wireless power transfer (WPT) applications, the size of the receiving coils must be small, so that the WPT systems can be embedded inside space-limited UAVs. The small size reduces the coupling coefficient and transfer efficiency between the transmitting and the receiving coils. In this study, we propose a toroidal-shaped coil for a WPT system for UAVs with high coupling coefficient with minimum space requirements. For validation, conventional coils and the proposed toroidal-shaped coil were used and their coupling coefficient and power transfer efficiency were compared using simulated and measured results. The simulated and measured results were strongly correlated, confirming that the proposed WPT system significantly improved efficiency with negligible change in the space requirement.