Co-Excitation for Simultaneous Health Monitoring of the Hydrogen Fuel Cell/Battery in Hybrid UAVs

A shared excitation method for electrochemical impedance extraction is proposed in this paper, enabling simultaneous online health monitoring of the fuel cell and lithium-ion battery in hybrid energy systems. To tackle the challenge of fast health monitoring for hydrogen-powered unmanned aerial vehicles, a co-excitation is designed exploiting the similarity and electrical connections between the power sources. The co-excitation signal is optimized based on distribution of relaxation time method analysis and Crest factor optimization. Real flights of a self-designed quadrotor are conducted to validate its feasibility, where superior performance on both signal-to-noise rate and time efficiency are demonstrated.