A Review on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Energy Sources and Management

Unmanned Aerial vehicle (UAV) systems have an insufficient amount of onboard energy which is being shared for mobility, transmission, data processing, control and payload related applications. Different energy sources have been investigated and applied to solve unmanned aerial vehicle energy limitations. These energy sources were either used as single sources or hybrid for the reason of UAV weight budget or miniaturization. To achieve the aforementioned designed criteria, researchers around the globe are continuously investigating different energy sources and hybridization techniques while others focus on the Energy Management System (EMS) such to achieve optimal energy sources utilization. Such energy sources and supplying techniques are battery swapping, wireless Power Transfer (WPT), tethering methods, Fuel Cells (FC), and SuperCapacitors (SC). While, the hybridization technique is based on the combination of single energy source with either renewable energy sources, Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) to save fuel or WPT. Example of such hybridization techniques are solar and battery storage, Fuel Cell (FC) and Battery Storage (BS) etc. This article presents an in-depth review of UAV energy sources, hybridization techniques and EMS. Their challenges and methods adopted by researchers to mitigate such UAV energy challenges.