Design, Simulation, and Comparison of Wireless Power Transfer Systems with Single and Multiple Resonator Coils for UAVs

The purpose of this study is to model and simulate a wireless charging system for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) using overhead power lines. Wireless charging of UAV decreases human intervention and facilitates their application in other industries. This study has studied the performance of single-coil and domino-based wireless charging systems that autonomously charge UAVs over power lines. It has studied the impact of system parameters like coil and WPT configurations on the received voltage and power of single-coil WPT and domino-based WPT. According to simulations, the inductance of the coils increases with the increase of the number of coils turns. Thus, the output voltage is higher for coils with more turns. Then the performance of the single coil has been compared with the performance of the domino-based WPT system in terms of their output voltage and transfer distance. It was concluded that a domino-based WPT system can transfer more energy at larger distances while operating at the resonant frequency of 18.5 kHz. The amount of output voltage is almost four times higher for resonator-based WPT system compared to single coil WPT system where the WPT system and coil design parameters are the same.