Abstract
Wireless power transfer (WPT) techniques are important in a variety of applications in both civilian and military fields. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being used for many practical purposes, such as monitoring or delivering payloads. There is a trade-off between the weight of the UAVs or their batteries and their flying time. Their working time is expected to be as long as possible. In order to support the UAVs to work effectively, WPT techniques are applied with UAVs to charge secondary energy supply sources in order to increase their working time. This paper reviews common techniques of WPT deployed with UAVs to support them while working for different purposes. Numerous approaches have been considered to illustrate techniques to exploit WPT techniques. The charging distances, energy harvesting techniques, electronic device improvements, transmitting issues, etc., are considered to provide an overview of common problems in utilizing and charging UAVs. Moreover, specific problems are addressed to support suitable solutions with either techniques or applications for UAVs.
Highlights
The concept of wireless power transfer (WPT) can be dated back to the early 20th Century whenNikola Tesla obtained a patent for the Tesla coil, a very revolutionary apparatus able to transfer energy through radial electromagnetic waves
As mentioned in the previous section, the most diffused principle of the WPT technique consists of a two-step process, which first converts the amount of power into an alternative type of energy, i.e., electric field or magnetic field, which can be transmitted to a receiver exploiting the magnetic induction or the electromagnetic radiation
This paper aimed to review the most important electromagnetic field (EMF) based WPT technologies that can be adopted to provide energy in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) networks
Summary
The concept of wireless power transfer (WPT) can be dated back to the early 20th Century when. The possibility to adopt WPT technologies for supplying power to UAV systems has been recently recognized as a very attractive approach able to lead toward alternative and efficient charging solutions [28,29,30,31,32]. It can be possible to create several wireless charging stations where the UAV can fly back to recharge its battery through the inductive WPT pads present on that station Since this approach would request the interruption of the activities performed by the UAV, the energy would be provided through electromagnetic radiation, avoiding the need for the UAV to fly back to its base station for charging, avoiding the interruption of its tasks, which in some cases like rescue operations could represent a critical aspect.
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