A Planar Distributed Receiver Coil Antenna Array to Encapsulate Vertical and Lateral H-Fields for Drone Wireless Charging

This paper presents a planar distributed receiver coil antenna array to harvest all the magnetic field components generated by a conventional transmitter for drone charging applications. For this purpose, four anti-parallel turn coils are placed on four arms of the drone to harvest lateral field components along with a conventional circular Rx coil that harvests vertical magnetic field. A DC combining technique is proposed for combining the output voltages induced in each receiver coil to avoid destructive superposition of responses. An EM simulator is used to analyze the potential of harvesting lateral fields by the proposed anti-parallel turn coils. Later, the anti-parallel turn coils’ positions are determined based on the maximum voltage induced in these coils. The system is further verified using an experimental setup, and the results prove a significant enhancement of output voltage. Thus, proving the potential of the proposed Rx coil antenna suitable for drone charging applications.