Technical Paper
Characterisation of a UAV Electric Architecture and Power Demand Profile for the Purposes of Improving Overall System Efficiency and Performance
2011-10-18
2011-01-2682
This paper presents a summary of several projects investigating the power generation and demand profiles of UAV power systems for the purposes of increasing overall system effectiveness. With an increasing presence of advanced energy generation and storage devices in UAV power architectures such as fuel cells, photovoltaics, super capacitors, etc., and an increasing potential to dynamically control a UAV system's load profiles, mission effectiveness can be substantially improved via intelligent power management techniques as well as through traditional efficiency improvements. Load scheduling, power smoothing and dynamic mission planning can all introduce energy saving and optimization opportunities, particularly when the characteristics of system loads can be matched with the energy storage and generation of the system.