Constant Power Control Against M/R With Expanded PT-Symmetric Range for Wireless in-Flight Charging of Drones

Abstract

For the drone wireless in-flight charging system, the challenge is to keep a constant charging power under the large range of continuous fluctuation of mutual inductance ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">M</i> ), the variation of battery load ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R</i> ), and the limited payload of drones, which has been rarely studied in previous research. To address the issue, this paper presents a primary-series and secondary-series-inductor-series-parallel-capacitor (SLSPC) high-order topology for the parity-time (PT) symmetric wireless power transfer (WPT) system, which can greatly expand the exact PT-symmetric region (constant power range) by the reduction of critical coupling coefficient in comparison with the traditional series-series topology. Besides, the constant power control scheme is proposed based on the series-SLSPC high-order topology to overcome the change of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">M</i> and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R</i> . With the proposed control method, only the primary current needs to be detected, which enhances the real-time performance of the WPT system and reduces the payload of drones. Simulated and experimental results validate the expansion capability of the PT-symmetric range with the proposed series-SLSPC PT-WPT system and the feasibility of the proposed control scheme.