Introduction
Engineer(s):
Andrew Chai Kenny Na Megan Lee Santosh Erathasari
Background:
Unarchived project from the 2024 PDB 12S PDB
A power distribution board (PDB) is used for supplying and distributing power form the main power supply to various circuits and subsystems. In a drone/UAV context, the PDB is responsible for converting and distributing the battery pack voltage to the several electronics on the drone itself.
Reference COTS PDBs:
What:
Handle 12S input range (40V-50V)
12V & 5V output rails with sufficient current output for downstream electronics
Common voltage rails
Standard connector
Reverse Polarity Protection (RPP)
Voltage + Current Sense → maybe need CAN adapter circuit??
high current passthrough (may be difficult if this is taking in the entire bus current)
might be nice to have a discrete implementation of this, as well as I-sense for each rail
Redundancy Support (having just one supply rail makes the system single fault susceptible)
Proper input + output filtering networks (need to avoid resonant frequency of Li-Po batteries)
High efficiency power conversion system
Can try playing around with different ways to optimize for efficiency ie soft switching, IC selection