A New Magnetic Coupler With High Rotational Misalignment Tolerance for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Wireless Charging

In this letter, a novel magnetic coupler with high rotational misalignment tolerance is proposed for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) wireless charging. The transmitting coil consists of an inner coil and an outer circular coil connected in series, which generates a horizontal magnetic field from the center to all periphery directions within the charging range. Then, to receive the flux effectively and to adapt to UAV's structure, a vertical square air-core coil is designed and attached to the landing gear. The proposed magnetic coupler can reduce significantly the magnetic fluxes penetrating through the body of the UAV, therefore mitigating electromagnetic interference with onboard devices. Simulation based on ANSYS Maxwell and experiments based on a laboratory prototype are carried out to validate the proposal. The results show that, the proposed magnetic coupler can transmit power in all 360 degrees of rotational misalignments, and the output voltage of the wireless charging system fluctuates only 2% around the 48 V reference.