Design analysis and considerations of power efficient electronic speed controller for small-scale quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicle

In recent years small-scale quadcopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) a.k.a drone has been gaining in momentum owing to ubiquitous applications ranging from military surveillance to civilian courier services. Drones these days are so advanced that it has coupled with high-resolution cameras for filming high quality videos, and image recognition algorithm to avoid objects obstruction. Due to massive electronics on board, drones are always power hungry and hence limiting its flight time per battery charge. Having a stable battery life with long flight time platform is one of the key elements for competitive products in drone industry. This paper focuses on the power electronics design considerations, specifically on the most power hungry electronic modules on a drone, i.e. electronic speed controller (ESC). Based on power electronics theory, power loss and flight time estimation models on the 3-phase motor driver, using state-of-the-art Silicon-based Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (Si-IGBT), emerging wide-bandgap semiconductor duals, i.e. silicon carbide (SiC) and Gallium Nitride (GaN) power transistors models are computed and compared.