Baicaibang tethered drone - the guarantor of emergency communications

Baicaibang's tethered drones have provided strong support for emergency communications in disaster relief operations in many places. The main tethered multi-rotor drone models have a maximum flight altitude of 200 meters, a maximum load capacity of 15 kg, a fixed-point hovering time of 4-24 hours, and the ability to fly continuously for a long time without failure. The drone system transmits the 400V high voltage from the ground power system to the airborne system through a tethered cable, and converts it to 48V through the onboard power module to power the drone motor system.

Tethered drone + base station

The onboard power subsystem of a tethered drone is the core component of the end-to-end system when it is operating in the air. It provides power for the drone motor and onboard load equipment, and is the basis for ensuring long-term, uninterrupted, safe and reliable flight of the system. This requires the onboard power supply equipment to be light in weight and small in size to improve the overall load capacity of the system; high input and output voltage stability to ensure that the system works stably under various conditions such as strong winds and high altitudes; high energy density and strong load capacity to ensure that the number of components is not increased during system margin design, making it easy to design; high thermal efficiency to reduce the heat dissipation area, further improving the overall load capacity of the system.

In this design, Vicor power conversion modules meet the specific operating requirements of this tethered drone. The Vicor BCM4414 in a VIA package operates from a 260V-410V DC high voltage bus to provide an isolated, unregulated low voltage of 32.5V-51.3V DC. The unique ultra-thin module combines DC-DC conversion, integrated filtering, and PMBus® command and control in a base or PCB mount package. The BCM provides low noise, fast transient response, and industry-leading efficiency and power density. The advantages of Vicor VIA packaging technology in heat dissipation and density enable highly flexible thermal management options using extremely low thermal impedance on both the top and bottom sides.

During the system verification test phase, Vicor and Baicaibang's technical personnel worked closely together to conduct comprehensive functional and performance tests on the power subsystem, and tested the system's stability, reliability and temperature status through long-term operation; laboratory joint debugging tests of subsystems and the entire system, set up a laboratory simulation environment, and jointly debugged the airborne power supply, ground power supply, tethered cables, simulated loads, etc., tested end-to-end output, and conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the monitoring system, flight control system, and protection functions; field tests were conducted under different working conditions to fully examine all design indicator performance of the system.

At present, tethered drones are mainly used in emergency communications, aerial testing of scientific research equipment, security monitoring, status monitoring, air quality collection and other fields. It is believed that with the continuous improvement of communication equipment in terms of miniaturization and lightweight, tethered drones will play a role in more severe scenarios and provide faster and more convenient emergency solutions.