Electromagnetic Interference on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): A Case Study of High Power Transmission Line Impacts

Nowadays, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) play a significant role in transmission line inspection. This paper focuses on the inertial measurement unit (IMU) as a critical component to study impacts of electromagnetic interference. A case study is conducted by selecting 500 kV/25 kA 60Hz transmission lines as sources of strong electromagnetic fields and investigate their influences on an IMU unit and operation of an UAV. An experimental testing methodology is proposed to explore impacts of magnetic and electric fields separately. A high-power inverter based testing platform is implemented to excite a 2.2-kA planar coil and a 7.5-kA solenoid coil to generate magnetic fields and emulate high current impacts from transmission lines. Meanwhile, a pair of metal plates are adopted to generate a 2 kV/m electric field and study the high voltage impacts. Multiple long-time continuous testings of the DJI Marvic 2 drone have been conducted in the generated magnetic and electric fields. It validates that the onboard magnetometer is sensitive to magnetic fields, while other sensors remain immune to both magnetic and electric fields, at least up to 3100 μT and 2 kV/m, respectively.