Special Issue Article Open Access

Radio Control Based DC-DC Converter for Micro Air Vehicle Applications

Abstract

A Micro Air Vehicle (MAV), or Micro Aerial Vehicle, is a class of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) that has a size restriction and may be autonomous or remote controlled mode of operation. Modern craft can be as small as 15 centimeters. The small craft allows remote observation of hazardous environments, inaccessible to ground vehicles. For efficient flying of modern MAVs, the control surface movements of MAV is replaced with Macro Fiber Composite (MFC) in place of servo mechanism as control actuator. This actuator works with the voltage range of -500 to 1500V. The controlling signal is sent through the radio control transmitter. The receiving side (MAV) has an antenna through which it receives the radio signals. In this paper the received radio signals in the form of PWM were converted to DC voltage in the range of 0-5V by developing a PWM to voltage converter. For actuator movement of MFC a high voltage DC-DC converter is required. The DC-DC converter for the range-500 to 1500V was designed using upconverted PWM signal. Input voltage for all designed electronics has to be powered by a 12V MAV battery. The switching action of the DC- DC converterneeds to generate the output based on the signal input from the PWM. The designed DC-DC converter was evaluated by using Simulink simulation results.

Sophia Markose, SivaSubbaRaoPatange, Raja S, Salice Peter

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