Responding quickly to natural disasters and restoring communications is important to reinstating the supply line of essential services such as drinking water, food, and electricity. This enables first responders to support the time-critical needs of victims and helps ensure their safety. Lack of mobile communication frustrates restoration efforts, putting lives at risk.
Fukaden, a power supply and drone manufacturing company in Japan, develops a tethered drone with a communication base station to deliver internet and mobile phone services in the wake of natural disasters. This helps to quickly overcome communication barriers, enabling those in jeopardy access to critical support services. Powered by portable generators, these lightweight drones can be deployed with first responders to facilitate communications around needed supplies and human services.
Critical to the performance of the drone is its ground and drone-embedded power delivery network. Fukaden’s power control BOX II main power supply for the land power network delivers power via a tether to the drone and can be scaled using units in parallel to triple the power to 3 kW. This added power enables the wireless communication base stations to be mounted on the drone to expand cellular services to an area 10 km in diameter.
Fukaden’s drones require power that ranges from 1 to 5 kW. Similar to other UAV solutions, Fukaden was able to minimise the size and weight of the tether cable by using higher voltage power, which reduced current. By increasing the tether voltage to 370 V DC from 24 V DC, the 1 kW tether cable weight was reduced 11 times, from 125 g to 11,1 g per meter. This valuable space and weight savings contributes to less drag and better performance. To support the added weight of the communication base station, Fukaden deployed higher voltage (700 V), a thinner tether and used three high-voltage Vicor BCM fixed ratio converters in parallel. This delivered the extra power needed to support payload, duration and communication services.
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