A Hybrid Electric UAV Energy Management Strategy Based on PSO and Virtual Inductor

In this paper, a real-time Energy Management Strategy (EMS) based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and virtual inductor is proposed for hybrid electric Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) powered by fuel cells and lithium batteries. For comparative analysis, EMS-based Finite-State Machine (FSM) and Dynamic Programming (DP) are also designed in this paper. Though simulating on MATLAB, the results demonstrate that the proposed EMS can effectively reduce the hydrogen consumption of the system, thereby improving fuel economy. Additionally, the EMS smooths the output power of the fuel cell with the aid of the virtual inductor.