Past, Present and Future Trends of Non-Radiative Wireless Power Transfer

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Recent progress in mid-range wireless power transfer

This is a review paper describing recent progress of mid-range applications of wireless power transfer. Starting from Tesla's principles of wireless power transfer a century ago, it outlines magneto-inductive research activities in the last decade on wireless power transfer with the transmission distance in the order of or greater than the coil dimension. It covers the basic characteristics of 2-coil systems, 4-coil systems, systems with relay resonators and the wireless domino-resonator systems. © 2012 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Planar Wireless Charging Technology for Portable Electronic Products and Qi

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Monitoring of multiple loads in wireless power transfer systems without direct output feedback

In this paper, a computational method that uses only the input voltage and current to identify the impedances of multiple loads in wireless power transfer systems without any direct load measurements is proposed. The method has been practically realized in a wireless power domino-resonator system comprising 8 resonators. A good degree of accuracy has been achieved in the practical verification. Although the method is demonstrated in a relatively complex system, the principle applies to any wireless power transfer system with 3 or more coil-resonators. Without the requirements for direct load measurements, control circuitry of a wireless power transfer system with multiple loads can avoid the needs for using wireless communication system for feedback purposes. © 2014 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Review on stationary CPT technologies and coil designs for EVs

In the recent decade, the driving range of pure EVs with zero emission target has become a popular topic as the massive battery requirement for longer distance travels means higher vehicle cost and longer time of recharging periods. Stationary CPT charging solutions could be an alternative to reduce EVs weight, size and energy storage unit costs. Fortunately, with progressive success of low-power CPT charging applications proposed to be commercially produced in the past decade, hundreds of kilowatts level high-power CPT charging techniques for EVs are more and more expected to be an optimally suitable solution for recharging EV batteries, providing higher propulsion and delivering continuously longer driving range in the next generations of the EVs. The idea of deploying inductive coupling for EVs has acquired a lot of attentions in the last decade due to the contributions and advancements of power electronics, switching power supply, semiconductors, microprocessors, electrochemistry, material sciences, control technologies, electromagnetics and so on, despite many challenges to be addressed including EV manufacturing integration with CPT system under the chassis, infrastructure difficulties, system maintenance on both vehicle and transmitting ground sides, actual CPT performance with real-time coupling on real-world road. In order to ensure the realization and enhance the sustainability in transportation sector with the emerging CPT ideas, currently the stationary CPT charging solutions based on inductive power transfer (IPT) have been developed from laboratory level as a first step to the practical tests of commercial realizations. In a few industrial fields nowadays, some of the proposed CPT technologies with specific coupler coil designs have been expected for real-world applications. This article presents a state of the art of the CPT technologies and focuses on reviewing current coil designs for high-power contactless energy transfer for EVs in the literature

Independent primary-side controller applied to wireless chargers for electric vehicles

Electric vehicles rely on batteries that need to be frequently recharged. As an alternative to conductive charging, wireless chargers provide a higher reliability to pollution and electric failures and they also extend the situations and places where the recharge could be available without user’s intervention (e.g. parking spaces, on-road). In order to optimize the performance of a wireless charger, its configuration should be dynamically adapted to the varying battery’s electrical features. Towards this goal, controllers are incorporated into the system to modify the behavior of some switching devices belonging to the power electronics blocks. This paper presents a controller that acts in the DC/DC structure placed in the primary side. As a novelty, the controller infers the instantaneous battery power demands by exclusively measuring voltage and current in the primary side. In this way, there is no need for communicating (via wired or wireless links) the primary and the secondary sides. The simulation results show the ability of the controller to adapt to different battery states.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucia Tec

A critical review of recent progress in mid-range wireless power transfer

Starting from Tesla’s principles of wireless power transfer a century ago, this critical review outlines recent magneto-inductive research activities on wireless power transfer with the transmission distance greater than the transmitter coil dimension. It summarizes the operating principles of a range of wireless power research into (i) the maximum power transfer and (ii) the maximum energy efficiency principles. The differences and the implications of these two approaches are explained in terms of their energy efficiency and transmission distance capabilities. The differences between the system energy efficiency and the transmission efficiency are also highlighted. The review covers the 2-coil systems, the 4-coil systems, the systems with relay resonators and the wireless domino-resonator systems. Related issues including human exposure issues and reduction of winding resistance are also addressed. The review suggests that the use of the maximum energy efficiency principle in the 2-coil systems is suitable for short-range rather than mid-range applications, the use of the maximum power transfer principle in the 4-coil systems is good for maximizing the transmission distance, but is under a restricted system energy efficiency (< 50%); the use of the maximum energy efficiency principle in relay or domino systems may offer a good compromise for good system energy efficiency and transmission distance on the condition that relay resonators can be placed between the power source and the load.published_or_final_versio

Parameter identification of wireless power transfer systems using input voltage and current

Wireless power transfer (WPT) systems based on the use of resonators with high quality factors are highly sensitive to the parameters of the resonant tanks. While the inductance terms can be theoretically calculated, the mutual inductance terms require very accurate measurements of the coil dimensions, locations and orientations. Slight deviations of these measurements could therefore lead to significant errors. In addition, capacitors have fairly large tolerance in terms of their capacitance, making it difficult to assume their rated values in the determination of the optimal operating frequency of the WPT systems. In this paper, a parameter identification method for WPT systems based on the measurements of the input voltage and current is presented. Using an evolutionary algorithm, accurate parameter values required for modeling the WPT system can be determined. This method has been successfully illustrated in a 3-coil WPT system. Good agreements between calculated and measured parameters have been achieved. © 2014 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Ball-Joint Wireless Power Transfer Systems

A new wireless power transfer (WPT) system based on ball-joint structure is presented in this paper. A ball-joint WPT system consists of a ball structure with a mechanical rod attached to the ball and a ball socket that accommodates the ball structure. This ball-joint structure comprises at least one winding in the ball structure and at least one winding in the ball socket structure. The ball structure can be flexibly rotated over a wide range of angle inside the ball socket, while wireless power can still be transferred from the transmitter winding to the receiver winding through magnetic resonance. The magnetic coupling coefficient between the transmitter and receiver coil over a wide rotating angular range has been analyzed and experimentally checked. Experimental results confirm that an energy efficiency of up to 81% can be achieved

Study of wireless power transfer link with metallic plates

In this paper, the wireless power transfer link with metallic plates is studied. By enforcing the boundary conditions along metallic surface, the magnetic fields are well confined between two plates and its flux focusing can be also improved. Meanwhile, the large metallic plates can also help to achieve higher transfer efficiency of the wireless power transfer link. Based on the filter theory, these enhanced field intensity effectively enlarge the dynamic range of coupling degree, thus improving the efficiency of the energy transmission. Finally, a 40.68MHz wireless transfer link with the highest measured efficiency of 86.56% is obtained and demonstrated. © 2013 IEEE.published_or_final_versio