Comparative Analysis of Wireless Power Transfer Couplers for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Drones

Several magnetic couplers have been presented for IPT-based charging of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) with different sizes, transmission distances, power ratings, and landing gears. Therefore, it is hard to conclude the superiority or suitability of existing couplers for a given UAV application without evaluating their performance under common indices. Thus, a comparative analysis of existing IPT couplers for UAVs is conducted in this article, considering electromagnetic and physical performance indices. This includes efficiency, leakage magnetic field, misalignment tolerance, receiver coil volumetric power density, weight, and total harmonic distortion (THD) of transmitter and receiver currents. The validity of the analysis is experimentally supported. This article identifies the following: relative advantages and disadvantages of existing couplers, the best couplers suited for different landing gears of UAVs in the rotary-wing category, the impact of compensation on UAV coupler performance, and the best overall performing couplers. Moreover, future directions are suggested based on the drawbacks identified through analysis.