I-Corps: Radio Frequency Beamforming for Wireless Drone Charging

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是创建无线充电器，这是最终采用程序化/半自主商业无人机使用所必需的。这些充电器直接解决了无人机电池容量的重大挑战，并与加油站为汽车和卡车提供的容量相同。鉴于人们对将无人机技术用于石油天然气、电信和公用事业资产检查等历史上危险和繁重的活动的兴趣迅速增长，该平台可能成为最终无人机基础设施的关键部分。无线充电本质上是一种清洁的电力传输方法;通过实现更清洁的技术，如电动多旋翼机，而不是燃料驱动的固定翼无人机，我们的平台将成为未来节能的主要促进因素。这个I-Corps项目成功展示了使用射频（RF）波束成形的长距离无线电力传输。使用软件定义的无线电已经开发出具有多个天线和能量采集器的工作原型，该工作原型使用RF波束成形来展示成功的远程无线充电。为了扩展系统以向无人机提供无线电力，提出了具有多个天线的大规模MIMO发射器。每个天线的信号建设性地干扰其他天线，在无人机的方向上提供有效的波束成形功率增益，无人机被改装有整流器，以将电磁能转换为可用的直流电来为电池充电。如果无人机在视线范围内，充电器可以在40到60英尺的范围内无线供电，同时假设天线的互耦得到了适当的补偿。无人机规模的发射机和接收机架构已经完全设计好，需要进一步实现数字信号处理软件、系统并行化和大功率整流电路，以实现完整的波束形成解决方案。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to create wireless chargers, which are necessary for the eventual adoption of programmatic/semi-autonomous commercial drone usage. These chargers directly address the significant challenge of drone battery capacity, and serve in the same capacity as gas stations do for cars and trucks. Given the rapidly growing interest in the use of drone technology for historically dangerous and onerous activities such as oil & gas, telecom, and utility asset inspection, the platform could become a key part of the eventual drone infrastructure. Wireless charging is inherently a clean method of power transmission; by enabling cleaner technologies, such as electric multicopters, rather than fuel-powered fixed-wing drones, our platform will be a major accelerant for energy savings in the future.This I-Corps project successfully demonstrates long-distance wireless power transfer using Radio Frequency (RF) beamforming. A working prototype with multiple antennas and an energy harvester that exhibits successful long-range wireless charging using RF beamforming has been developed using software defined radios. In order to scale the system to deliver wireless power to drones, a massive MIMO transmitter with multiple antennas is proposed. Each antenna's signal constructively interferes with the others, providing an efficiently beamformed power gain in the direction of the drone, which is retrofitted with a rectifier to convert the electromagnetic energy to usable direct current to charge the battery. Provided the drones are within line-of-sight, the chargers can deliver power wirelessly from up to 40 to 60 feet, also assuming proper compensation of the mutual coupling from the antennas. The transmitter and receiver architectures at the scale of drones have been fully designed, and require further implementation of the digital signal processing software, system parallelization, and high-power rectifying circuit to realize the full beamforming solution.