Measurements of Electromagnetic Emission inside Industrial Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been spread into various markets, such as logistics. The UAVs are requested to be safely flying above densely populated areas. Electromagnetic interference (EMI) problems can become prominent within their compact chassis where multiple electronic modules are densely packed. This paper presents the EMI evaluation between IC chips and wireless communications inside an industrial UAV. Also the two main sources of electromagnetic (EM) waves, power modules and control modules, are explored in respective dominant frequency ranges with near-field EM measurements up to 5 GHz. The influence on cellular communication performance was evaluated with a wireless communication system level simulator, predicting the degradation by 9 dB in the minimum receiver sensitivity of long-term evolution (LTE) communication system even if a receiver module is mounted at 200 mm distance in the chassis.