Wireless Power Transfer Near-field Technologies for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): A Review

Wireless power transfer (WPT) techniques are being popular currently with the development of midrange wireless powering and charging technology to gradually substitute the need for wired devices during charging. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are also being used with many practical purposes for agriculture, surveillance, and healthcare, etc. There is a trade-off between the weight of the UAVs or their batteries and their flying time. In order to support those UAVs perform better in their tasks, WPT is applied in UAVs to recharge batteries which help to increase their working time. This paper highlights up-to-date studies that are specific to near-field WPT deploying into UAVs. The charging distances, the transfer efficiency, and transfer power, etc. are considered to provide an overview of all common problems in using and charging UAVs, especially for autonomous landing and charging. By classification and suggestions in specific problems will be provided opportunities and challenges with respect to apply near-field WPT techniques for charging the battery of UAVs and other applications in the real world. Received on 29 November 2019; accepted on 18 January 2020; published on 31 January 2020