Abstract
This article presents the design and characterisation of a new low-power hardware platform to integrate unmanned aerial vehicle and wireless sensor technologies. In combination, these technologies can overcome data collection and maintenance problems of in situ monitoring in remote and extreme environments. Precision localisation in support of maximum efficiency mid-range inductive power transfer when recharging devices and increased throughput between drone and device are needed for data intensive monitoring applications, and to balance proximity time for devices powered by supercapacitors that recharge in seconds. The platform described in this article incorporates ultra-wideband technology to achieve high-performance ranging and high data throughput. It enables the development of a new localisation system that is experimentally shown to improve accuracy by around two orders of magnitude to 10 cm with respect to GNSS and achieves almost 6 Mbps throughput in both lab and field conditions. These results are supported by extensive modelling and analysis. The platform is designed for application flexibility, and therefore includes a wide range of sensors and expansion possibilities, with source code for two applications made immediately available as part of a open source project to support research and development in this new area.
Highlights
Remote monitoring under challenging conditions continues to present problems to prospective practitioners
Our work focuses on charging static terrestrial devices, charging of drones has been considered in the literature ranging from similar inductive power transfer system (IPT) techniques to harvesting from power lines [14]
The DW1000’s DC is 1%, and the drone approaching speed v is programmed at 2 m/s
Summary
Remote monitoring under challenging conditions continues to present problems to prospective practitioners. Remote sensing devices may be tasked with collecting a variety of heterogeneous time series data sets to be retrieved by a drone at periodic intervals, while at the same time recharging the device’s battery or other energy store. This poses several relatively novel challenges, including the design of appropriate communication and localisation mechanisms. Motivated to continue work on the development of communications and localisation technologies to enable UAV-sensor data collection and power transfer, it was necessary to design and build a new hardware platform. Design and characterisation of a new hardware platform to support UAV-based remote monitoring operations, including precision localisation and wireless power transfer;.
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