Abstract:
An omnidirectional wireless power transfer (WPT) system based on spatial rotating magnetic field is proposed to solve the problem of alignment of the transmitter and the receiver in the traditional magnetic-field coupling WPT system for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Three regular hexagon coils that share the same plane are adopted in the primary side of the new magnetic coupler. The exciting currents of the coils own the same amplitude with 120° phase difference among them, which produces a spatial rotating magnetic field over the transmitters, and that magnetic field provides the omnidirectional energy coupling channel. The main flux of the magnetic field rotates in the horizontal plane and couples with the air-core pick-up pad effectively, which is perpendicular to the plane of the transmitting coil, so the working area of the magnetic field is far away from UAV's body. An experiment setup is built to verify the validity of the omnidirectional WPT system applied to UAV wireless energy supply, which takes the energy transfer power and efficiency as the evaluation index. The testing result shows that the system can transfer energy efficiently in specific area when the receiver rotates any angle.