UAV and Drone Development Solutions
Taking Aerial Systems to New Heights
Useful jump links:
- How Avnet Silica enables UAV development
- Key UAV applications
- Enabling technologies
- Frequently asked questions
- Featured products
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, are playing an increasingly important role across a wide range of industries, from agriculture and infrastructure inspection to surveying, emergency response, and media production. Offering a more flexible and cost-effective alternative to traditional aerial platforms, drones have evolved rapidly from early hobbyist applications into highly capable, connected, and increasingly intelligent systems.
Modern drone designs bring together multiple technology domains, including wireless connectivity, high-precision positioning, advanced sensing, and embedded processing, all within tightly constrained power, weight, and thermal envelopes. Delivering reliable performance across these domains requires careful system-level design, where each component must be selected and optimised as part of a coherent architecture.
For OEMs, platform developers, and system integrators, this evolution introduces increasing system complexity, alongside significant opportunities to differentiate through capability, autonomy, and scalability.
Avnet Silica supports customers in navigating this complexity by combining access to leading semiconductor technologies with system-level design guidance, strong supplier partnerships, and long-term supply-chain support, enabling the development of robust, production-ready UAV platforms.
How Avnet Silica Enables UAV Development
When designing an airborne platform, every gram matters. In drone systems, performance, reliability, and functionality must all be balanced within strict constraints on weight, power consumption, and thermal limits. Furthermore, as platforms continue to evolve from relatively simple, pilot-controlled systems to more capable and increasingly autonomous, or even swarm-based deployments, the level of integration required increases significantly.
Avnet Silica works alongside system developers from the earliest stages of development, helping to address these challenges at a system level. Our engineering teams provide guidance on RF and antenna design for reliable command, control, and data links, support the integration of GNSS and positioning technologies, and assist in selecting processing, sensing and power components to balance real-time control requirements with onboard data processing, energy efficiency and thermal constraints.
Through established partnerships with leading semiconductor and technology suppliers, Avnet Silica provides early visibility into product roadmaps, access to engineering expertise, and strategic lifecycle planning insights. We enable informed architectural decisions, support cross-vendor interoperability, and help future-proof drone designs against evolving connectivity, positioning, and autonomy requirements.
By aligning system design decisions with both current performance requirements and future scalability, Avnet Silica helps customers reduce integration risk and accelerate development, enabling drone platforms to reach new heights in performance, efficiency, and reliability.
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Key UAV Applications
As drone platforms continue to mature, their adoption is accelerating across a wide range of industries, delivering both operational efficiencies and enabling entirely new capabilities.
In precision agriculture, drones are used for crop monitoring, spraying, and field mapping, enabling targeted interventions that reduce input waste and improve yield. High-resolution imaging, combined with repeatable, autonomous flight paths, allows operators to track and improve crop health over time, enabling more effective responses to changing conditions.
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Infrastructure inspection is another key application area where drones are used to assess assets such as power lines, wind turbines, bridges, and rail networks. By replacing manual inspection methods, these systems reduce risk while providing detailed visual and sensor data that can be analysed to identify faults and prioritise maintenance.
In surveying and mapping, drones support construction, mining, and land development projects by delivering accurate, up-to-date site data. Advanced positioning and imaging technologies enable the creation of detailed terrain models and support more efficient planning and resource management.
Drones also play an important role in search and rescue and emergency response scenarios, where rapid deployment and real-time data transmission are critical. Equipped with thermal imaging and advanced sensing capabilities, these platforms can help locate individuals, assess hazards, and support coordinated response efforts in challenging environments such as wildfires.
In media and broadcasting, drones have seen widespread adoption, replacing traditional aerial filming methods to provide stable, high-quality footage for film, television, and live events. In parallel, coordinated multi-drone ‘swarm’ deployments are emerging as a new form of visual display, offering programmable alternatives to traditional fireworks.
Across these use cases, delivering consistent performance requires a tightly integrated system design, where control, sensing, connectivity and power must be carefully balanced to meet the specific demands of each application.
Enabling Technologies for UAV Systems
The performance and capabilities of modern drone platforms are defined by the technologies that underpin them.
Wireless Connectivity
Reliable wireless communication is fundamental to drone operation, supporting command and control, telemetry, and high-bandwidth payload data such as video streams. These links must deliver low latency, high reliability, and predictable performance, even over long distances, under constant movement and in the presence of interference.
Low-latency control links are commonly implemented using proprietary RF protocols operating in licence-free bands, prioritising responsiveness and robustness. Higher data-rate links support real-time video transmission via Wi-Fi, custom RF solutions, or cellular technologies such as LTE and 5G, enabling beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations, remote fleet management, and integration with cloud-based platforms.
At the hardware level, these capabilities are enabled by wireless system-on-chips (SoCs), RF front-end components, power amplifiers, filters and antennas, all of which must be carefully selected and integrated to ensure reliable performance within size, weight and power constraints. Ultra-low-power wireless solutions, such as Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF52833 SoC, provide Bluetooth® Low Energy with long-range capability, supporting robust local communication links where power efficiency and link budget are critical. For wide-area connectivity, cellular modules from providers such as Quectel enable scalable communication for drone platforms operating beyond visual line of sight.
High-Precision GNSS and Positioning
Accurate positioning is a critical requirement for drone operation, from maintaining precise flight paths in surveying to enabling safe operation near infrastructure; positioning performance directly impacts both efficiency and reliability.
Modern multi-band GNSS solutions support advanced techniques such as Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) positioning and Precise Point Positioning (PPP), delivering centimetre-level accuracy under suitable conditions. These approaches provide fast convergence times and reliable performance across diverse environments. To maintain continuity in dynamic operating conditions, positioning systems may also incorporate dead-reckoning techniques or be combined with inertial measurement units (IMUs) to enable the platform to estimate its position during temporary signal degradation or loss. This sensor fusion approach improves overall robustness, particularly in urban environments or areas with partial signal obstruction.
Suppliers such as u-blox and STMicroelectronics provide high-performance GNSS receivers and positioning solutions that support multi-band operation, fast convergence times, and reliable performance across challenging environments. These technologies enable precise navigation and positioning across drone platforms used in mapping, inspection, and autonomous operation.
Sensing, Control, and Embedded Processing
A wide range of processing architectures are used to meet the requirements of modern drone platforms. Flight control, motor management and other safety-critical functions are typically handled by deterministic, real-time processing elements such as microcontrollers (MCUs) or digital signal controllers. More complex tasks, including navigation, communication management and data processing, are executed on higher-performance application processors or integrated SoCs. In more advanced systems, hardware accelerators or dedicated AI engines support functions such as object detection, obstacle avoidance and visual navigation.
Sensing plays a dual role within drone systems. Core sensors such as inertial measurement units (IMUs), barometers, and GNSS provide the feedback required for stable flight and control. In parallel, application-specific sensors, including image sensors, thermal cameras, LiDAR, and radar, are used to capture and interpret data during the mission.
Avnet Silica supports customers in selecting and integrating processing and sensing technologies, working closely with leading semiconductor partners to ensure optimal system performance and integration. STMicroelectronics, for example, provides a broad range of motion and imaging sensors, including accelerometers, gyroscopes, and image sensors, enabling tightly integrated flight stabilisation and perception systems within compact drone designs. Renesas offers sensor and mixed-signal solutions, including time-of-flight (ToF), temperature, and proximity sensors, supporting both flight control feedback loops and application-level data acquisition.
Power, Drive Systems and Energy Management
Every aspect of a drone’s power architecture, from energy storage through to motor control, must be carefully optimised to balance performance against strict constraints on weight, thermal limits, and energy consumption.
At the core of the system, battery management and power distribution define how energy is stored, regulated, and delivered across the platform. This includes battery balancing, DC-DC conversion, voltage regulation, and protection functions such as eFuses and isolation, all of which are critical to ensuring stable and reliable operation under varying load conditions.
Equally important are the drive systems. Brushless DC (BLDC) motors are widely used in drone platforms, requiring efficient motor drive solutions that must operate with high efficiency to minimise losses while maintaining fast response times for stable flight and manoeuvrability.
onsemi provides a comprehensive portfolio of power and motor control solutions for drone platforms, including gate drivers, MOSFETs, DC-DC converters, battery management components, and protection devices. Reference designs such as its drone system platform demonstrate how these elements can be combined into a complete power tree, integrating energy storage, power conversion, and motor drive into a coherent, high-efficiency architecture.
Working on a UAV project? Partner with Avnet Silica
Developing modern drone platforms requires coordinated expertise across connectivity, positioning, sensing, processing, and power system design. As performance expectations increase and applications become more specialised, the challenge is no longer selecting individual components but ensuring they operate together as part of a coherent and scalable architecture.
By working closely with customers and a broad network of leading technology partners, Avnet Silica helps translate system requirements into practical, production-ready designs. Whether optimising an existing platform or developing a new UAV system from the ground up, Avnet Silica provides the technical insight, supplier access and long-term support needed to bring advanced drone designs successfully into deployment.
Frequently asked UAV and Drone questions
| Questions | Answers |
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What is the difference between UAVs and drones? |
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is the technical term referring specifically to the aircraft itself, while “drone” is a broader, more commonly used term that can refer to the complete system, including the UAV, ground control systems, and communication links. In practice, the terms are often used interchangeably, although UAV is more common in technical and regulatory contexts. |
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What are the main components of a modern drone system? |
The core building blocks include:
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What are the key considerations when designing a drone platform? |
Key factors include:
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How is AI being used in drones? |
AI enables drones to perform more advanced functions such as object detection, obstacle avoidance, autonomous navigation, and mission planning. By processing sensor and vision data onboard, AI allows drones to operate with greater autonomy and reduced reliance on remote control. This is particularly important for applications such as inspection, surveying, and search and rescue, where real-time decision-making and adaptability are critical. |
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How does GNSS and positioning impact drone performance? |
Accurate positioning is essential for stable flight, navigation, and mission execution. Advanced GNSS solutions, such as Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) and Precise Point Positioning (PPP), can achieve centimetre-level accuracy under suitable conditions. When GNSS signals are degraded or unavailable, inertial measurement units (IMUs), dead reckoning, and sensor fusion help the platform estimate its position and maintain operational continuity. This is particularly important in urban environments, near infrastructure, and during autonomous and beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) operations. |
| How can drone design extend flight time and improve energy efficiency? | Extending flight time requires careful optimisation of the entire power and propulsion system. This includes efficient battery management, power conversion, and distribution, alongside high-efficiency motor control using brushless DC (BLDC) motors and optimised drive electronics. Minimising energy losses across DC-DC conversion, reducing system weight, and improving thermal performance all contribute to longer flight durations. Effective system-level design ensures efficient energy use across sensing, processing, and propulsion functions. |
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What are common challenges in deploying drone systems at scale? |
Typical challenges include:
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| How are drones evolving from remote-controlled platforms to autonomous and swarm-based systems? |
Drones are moving from manually controlled platforms toward increasingly autonomous systems that can navigate, process data, and make decisions onboard. In more advanced deployments, multiple drones may operate together as coordinated fleets or swarms, requiring orchestration across connectivity, positioning, sensing, and control systems. This increases the importance of reliable communication links, low-latency processing, precise localisation, and scalable system architectures. |
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What are some real-world applications of drones? |
Drones are widely used across:
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What is Avnet Silica’s role in drone development? |
Avnet Silica supports drone development at a system level, helping customers design and deploy robust, production-ready platforms. This includes guidance on RF and antenna design, GNSS integration, and the selection of processing, sensing, and power components to balance performance, efficiency, and thermal constraints. Avnet Silica also provides access to leading semiconductor partners, engineering expertise, and lifecycle support to reduce integration risk and accelerate development. |
| Who are some of Avnet Silica’s key drone technology partners? |
Avnet Silica works with leading semiconductor and technology partners across the drone ecosystem, including:
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Featured products
STMicroelectronics
STM32 MCU & MPU Families
The STM32 family of 32-bit microcontrollers based on the Arm® Cortex®-M processor and MPUs based on the Arm® Cortex®-A7 processor are designed to offer new degrees of freedom to MCU and MPU users.
Nordic Semiconductor
nRF54L
Built on the experience from the successful nRF52 Series—shipped in the billions and trusted by thousands of developers—the nRF54L Series is set to be a worthy successor.
onsemi
MOSFETs
onsemi’s MOSFET portfolio delivers best-in-class efficiency, reliability, and thermal performance for next-generation power solutions across automotive, industrial, energy infrastructure, and AI and datacenter markets.
Micron
Micron LPDDR5X
LPDDR5X (low-power double data rate 5X) memory offers the best performance and power efficiency compared to LPDDR5, LPDDR4X and LPDDR4.