Energy Management of a Solar-Battery Powered Fixed-Wing UAV

In this work, a hybrid solar-battery feeding system is proposed to achieve a constant output power on a fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-UAV. Firstly, a single and hybrid power source configurations for long endurance UAV applications are exposed. Thus, a solar-battery based feeding system with a suitable energy management is proposed. Furthermore, a Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) technique is selected to achieve the maximum efficiency of the solar photovoltaic (PV) array. Besides, Sliding-Mode Control (SMC) is implemented on a cascade control scheme in order to achieve a suitable energy conversion. Finally, the hybrid feeding system performance is analyzed for different solar radiation and load profiles remarking proper dynamic and steady-state responses.