Design and Analysis of a 35 GHz Rectenna System for Wireless Power Transfer to an Unmanned Air Vehicle

In this article, the concept of a 22-kW microwave-powered unmanned aerial vehicle is presented, where the critical system architecture is analyzed and modeled for wirelessly transferring microwave power to the flying UAVs. The microwave system transmitting power at a 35 GHz frequency was found to be suitable for low-cost and compact architectures. The size of the transmitting and receiving systems are optimized to 108 m2 and 90 m2, respectively. A linearly polarized 4 × 2 rectangular microstrip patch antenna array has been designed and simulated to obtain a high gain, high directivity, and high efficiency in order to satisfy the power transfer requirement. The numerically simulated gain, directivity, and efficiency of the proposed patch antenna array are 13.4 dBi, 14 dBi, and 85%, respectively. Finally, a rectifying system (rectenna) is optimized using the Agilent advanced design system (ADS) software as a microwave power receiving system. The proposed rectenna has an efficiency profile of more than 80% for an RF input power range of 9 to 18 dBm. Moreover, the RF-to-DC conversion efficiency and DC output voltage of the proposed rectenna is 80% and 3.5 V, respectively, for a 10 dBm input power at 35 GHz with a load of 1500 Ω.