Microwave Wireless Power Transfer for Mid-Air UAV Charging Using a Distributed Tiled Rectenna Architecture in 5G-Enabled Aerial Networks

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Abstract
Mid-air charging is a key enabler for persistent unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operation in 5G-enabled aerial networks, but practical microwave wireless power transfer (WPT) is constrained by how the receive rectenna can be integrated on small multi-rotor airframes. This paper investigates a distributed tiled rectenna architecture in which compact circularly polarized rectenna tiles are placed across the UAV body and arms to relax aperture constraints and reduce attitude-dependent reception. The prototype is experimentally characterized via per-tile received-power measurements under controlled pointing offsets and inter-tile coupling measurements, revealing non-uniform illumination and generally low coupling within the adopted spacing. Using these measured RF characteristics, a non-uniformity-aware scaling framework is developed to estimate the aggregated DC bus voltage of series-connected multi-tile configurations based on an empirical RF-to-DC conversion mapping. The results indicate that the proposed distributed tiled rectenna provides a viable and scalable receive-side approach for practical mid-air UAV charging using microwave WPT.
Funding Information
  • Institut Teknologi Bandung (72N/IT1.C12/SK-TA/2025)

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