System benefit of drone driven by GaN based inverter

Abstract:
Wide band-gap gallium nitride (GaN) devices are a popular choice to be considered for low-voltage battery-powered unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) application. Compared with traditional Si devices, large band-gap, high electron mobility and low dielectric constant make GaN suitable for fast-switching and high-power-density motor inverter drive, thus reducing the overall weight, volume and power consumption of motor inverter system for drones. The purpose of this work is to introduce a motor inverter with 100V GaN device for electric speed control (ESC) in drone propeller control. In drone application, the motor inverter drive for propeller is not only required high efficiency and power density but also serval key requirements such as dynamic response of speed bandwidth. A GaN-based motor inverter design with sensorless Field-Oriented Control (SL-FOC) will be presented with experimental results.