Designing UAV Charging Framework for Forest Area with Microgrid

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are suitable for forest fire monitoring, which is critical to prevent unexpected hazards. However, a lack of charging measures is the bottleneck restricting the development of surveillance drones in forest areas. This paper envisions a hierarchical charging framework of heterogeneous drones for forest fire surveillance based on a microgrid with renewable energy. Different replenishment methods of heterogeneous drones, as well as the coordination control strategy of the microgrid in a forest, which are designed to support continuous surveillance, are specified. To improve the transient stability as well as the capacity of fault ride-through in a forest microgrid for the multiple charging of fire surveillance drones, coordination control with a speed regulation strategy for a forest microgrid is proposed in which the substantial kinetic energy generated by the rotation of wind turbines is utilized to mitigate power fluctuations in a timely manner. Simulations are conducted under typical working conditions to verify the effectiveness of the method.