Effect of the DC-Link Capacitor Size on the Wireless Inductive-Coupled Opportunity-Charging of a Drone Battery

Andrea Carloni,Roberto Roncella,Roberto Di Rienzo,Roberto Saletti,Federico Baronti

doi:10.3390/en13102621

Abstract

Wireless inductive-coupled power transfer and opportunity battery charging are very appealing techniques in drone applications. Weight and size are very critical constraints in drones, so the battery and the on-board electronics must be as light and small as possible. The on-board components involved in the resonant inductive-coupled wireless power transfer usually consist of the secondary coil, the compensation capacitor, the bridge rectifier, the LC-filter and the battery. This paper suggests a sizing of the LC-filter capacitor that improves the charging power of the battery. In addition, further on-board space and size is saved by using the stray inductance of the battery as filtering inductor. LTSpice simulations and experimental tests carried out on the prototype of a wireless power transfer circuit shows the dependency of the power delivered to the battery on the filter capacitor size. Finally, it is found that the power transfer to the battery is maximized by choosing the capacitor value that sets the LC-filter resonant frequency close to the double of the excitation frequency of the wireless charging. The drawback is a large current and voltage ripple in the battery.

Highlights

Wireless circuits based on resonant inductive-coupled power transfer (ICPT) are very appealing for application to flying devices such as drones [1,2], to implement opportunity and fast charging of the battery
Four different ICPT configurations with specific behavior and performance are obtained according to the position of the compensation capacitors with respect to the coils [4]
The series–series (SS) architecture behaves like a current generator applied to the load as demonstrated in [5], and its resonant frequency depends neither on the power level to the load nor on the coil coupling coefficient [6], differently from the other configurations

Summary

Introduction

Wireless circuits based on resonant inductive-coupled power transfer (ICPT) are very appealing for application to flying devices such as drones [1,2], to implement opportunity and fast charging of the battery. The series–series (SS) architecture behaves like a current generator applied to the load as demonstrated in [5], and its resonant frequency depends neither on the power level to the load nor on the coil coupling coefficient [6], differently from the other configurations. These reasons make the SS architecture suited to charging Li-ion batteries in applications where the coil alignment is difficult, such as in drones [7,8]. The design of the primary circuit is straightforward, as the charger is usually positioned on the ground, and it is not limited by weight and volume constraints

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