GaN Advantage over MOSFET in Inverters for Drones. An Experimental Comparison

Battery-powered unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are revolutionizing today’s agriculture, where they are used to spray fertilizers and more. These drones use motor drives that need to be lightweight and efficient to maximize working battery life and extend flight time between recharging. Wide-bandgap devices, and specifically Gallium Nitride (GaN) FETs, have been demonstrated to improve BLDC motor drives in e-mobility and robotic applications [1], [2]. This paper presents the experimental tests to compare a GaN FET inverter with equivalent MOSFET inverters driving a permanent magnet motor for UAV agricultural drones.