Case study: Agricultural UAVs

Enabling greater functionality for reliability and productivity

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Customer’s challenge

Drones in agriculture are uniquely challenged to carry heavy payloads for longer spraying times while flying in varying conditions. They must cover large areas reliably and safely for an industry that demands high productivity. These drones are equipped with GPS, pumps, radar sensors, vision systems, and fail-safe systems that have different voltage and power levels. The key goals were:

Significantly reduce power supply weight and maximize space on-board for payload
Extend flight time for more productivity
Handle a wide range of input voltages

The Vicor solution

Vicor change to high-performance power modules are compact and lightweight, allowing the drone to carry the accessories needed to do its job such as pumps or sensors. At the same time, the high efficiency allows both increased flight time and a simplified thermal management that requires less space on board.

Key benefits

Higher efficiency to extend flight times and range of operation

Power modules support a variety of input voltages for PoL devices

Advanced packaging and topologies

Power delivery network

The Vicor DCM™ power module is an isolated, highly efficient, regulated DC-DC converter utilizing a high-frequency Zero-Voltage Switching (ZVS) topology, operating from an unregulated, wide range input to generate an isolated output. Modular DCM converters and downstream Vicor ZVS Buck and Buck-Boost products support efficient power distribution, providing superior power system performance and connectivity from a variety of unregulated power sources to the point-of-load.