Design of Ku-band wireless power transfer system to empower light drones

A wireless power transfer system is conceived to empower light drones and unmanned aerial vehicles. To satisfy the power budget of the wireless link and provide enough power to the drone, new circuits based on directive frequency-scanned leaky-wave antennas and circuits are proposed. It is shown how the proposed leaky-wave devices introduce enough gain in the receiver system, while assuring reception in a 120° field-of-view scanning range. At the same time, the suggested receiver system has low weight and cost since it is fully designed in PCB-compatible substrate integrated microwave technology. Preliminary results on this interesting system for wireless power transfer are presented in this paper.