An Electromagnetic Interference Reduction Check List for Unmanned Aircraft System

Abstract

Unmanned Aircraft Systems may allow to y an uninhabited airplane or satellite with an autonomous control and monitored by the supervisor on ground. Safety y must be guarantee as the rest of airworthiness airplanes or space compliance satellites. The Unmanned Aircraft Systems were designed to operate in dangerous situations, like military missions bud nowadays, civil commercial applications come to be feasible due to the evolution in distributed embedded avionics systems. Dull and tedious surveillance applications are desired for this Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. A pico-satellite is a less than a kilogram mass satellite used mainly on educational projects for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) missions. Due to short time of live, down-link communications are implemented in a very high level of integration and non-gravity conditions in order to deliberate the scienti c information before drop down to the atmosphere. Both, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and pico-satellites present same electromagnetic compatibility problems. This high level of integration, some times brings an electromagnetic interference situation between embedded systems especially because the near eld of emissions are present in the Unmanned Aircraft System reduced con ned avionics bay. Emission, Susceptibility, and Path are playing in this environment. That was our experience with an UAV Megastar model. The near earth antenna re ection produced a multi-path coupling. The radio transmitter antenna makes unserviceable the entire ight control surfaces, situation that makes an unsafe y. Also, during the pico-satellite design we must take in consideration the near eld for a good electromagnetic compatibility requirements. This paper is an electromagnetic compatibility study for Unmanned Aircraft System. We will show a case of real electromagnetic interference in our particular UAV Megastar, and how was solved. We will present some good EMC practices in order to translate the distributed embedded avionics platform to our new UAV Shadow MK1. Also we present our pico-satellite design and many examples of solutions of electromagnetic interferences. Finally we will consider an electromagnetic interference reduction check list applied on Unmanned Aircraft System where avionics bay con guration may change depending on the requirements of the mission.