Small unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)powered by electricity plays an important role in modern war,including intelligence acquisition,battlefield reconnaissance and so on.But short operation time severely constricts its application.To solve the problem,laser wireless power transmission is adopted to refuel the UAV in flight.Photovoltaic receiver converting optical energy into electricity is one of the key components of the system.Based on the principle of laser powered UAV and the feature of small UAV powered by electricity,the performance requirements of photovoltaic receiver are proposed.Correspondingly,five main factors influencing design of photovoltaic receiver are analyzed,such as operation mode,photovoltaic cell,structure and layout of receiver,cooling system and angle attenuation coefficient.It provides a reference for design of photovoltaic receiver.