Evaluation of GaN MOSFET for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles BLDC Motor Drive

The purpose of this paper is to address current issues in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle BLDC Motor Drive applications and to address also the future trends occurring in the industry of small UAV inverters. The paper touches briefly on the current state of the art regarding Wide Band Gap Power Electronics, with particular attention to the benefits and problems associated with the application of such components. Particular attention is given to the thermal dynamics and system robustness evaluation of the GaN based inverter, dynamically coupled to a DC source. A multi cell, series battery pack is used during the evolution of the state of charge making it possible to observe the various working conditions with which the system should be able to deal. This variety of conditions usually creates problems and it is common that the system should be adapted to enter a safe mode and operate a de-rating of the motor performances in order to not produce excessive stress on the inverter or batteries. The current research attempts to evaluate the behaviour of an EVAL GaN Power MOSFET based Inverter controlled by the ST Motor Control Workbench (Sensorless mode), and investigates the best solution for a UA V BLDC Motor Drive application.