Analysis and practical considerations in implementing multiple transmitters and receivers for wireless power transfer via coupled magnetic resonance

The technology to wirelessly power mobile devices has started to gain momentum especially in industry. Cables have started to become the thing of the past as both wireless power efficiency and communication speeds become viably attractive. The first part of this work gives analysis and practical considerations in implementing multiple transmitters for wireless power transfer via coupled magnetic resonance. Through the multiple transmitter scheme, there is an increase in gain and `diversity\u27 of the transmitted power according to the number of transmit coils. The effect of transmitter resonant coil coupling is also shown. Resonant frequency detuning due to nearby metallic objects is observed and the extent of how much tuning can be done is demonstrated. A practical power line synchronization technique is proposed to synchronize all transmit coils. This reduces additional dedicated synchronization wiring or the addition of an RF front end module. The second part of this study introduces a time division multiplexing (TDM) technique for tightly coupled receivers via the same method of coupled magnetic resonance. Two or more receivers can be powered simultaneously using a single transmit coil. In a tightly coupled receiver scenario, the received power is significantly reduced. Experimental and simulation results implementing TDM show vast improvements in received power in the tightly coupled case. Resonant frequency splitting is eliminated through synchronized detuning between receivers, which divide power equally between receivers at specific time slots. The last chapter gives insight on the capacity of a single-input single-output system at varying distances between receiver and transmitter. It is shown that the highest information rate is achieved at critical coupling

Beamforming for Magnetic Induction based Wireless Power Transfer Systems with Multiple Receivers

Magnetic induction (MI) based communication and power transfer systems have gained an increased attention in the recent years. Typical applications for these systems lie in the area of wireless charging, near-field communication, and wireless sensor networks. For an optimal system performance, the power efficiency needs to be maximized. Typically, this optimization refers to the impedance matching and tracking of the split-frequencies. However, an important role of magnitude and phase of the input signal has been mostly overlooked. Especially for the wireless power transfer systems with multiple transmitter coils, the optimization of the transmit signals can dramatically improve the power efficiency. In this work, we propose an iterative algorithm for the optimization of the transmit signals for a transmitter with three orthogonal coils and multiple single coil receivers. The proposed scheme significantly outperforms the traditional baseline algorithms in terms of power efficiency.Comment: This paper has been accepted for presentation at IEEE GLOBECOM 2015. It has 7 pages and 5 figure

Coherence-Multiplexed Optical RF Feeder Networks

An optical RF feeding system for wireless access is proposed, in which the radio access points are distinguished by means of coherence multiplexing (CM). CM is a rather unknown and potentially inexpensive optical code division multiple access technique, which is particularly suitable for relatively short-range applications with moderate transmission bandwidth requirements. Subcarrier multiplexing (SCM) can possibly be used on top of CM, either as single-channel or multichannel SCM. The performances of the resulting distribution networks are analyzed, incorporating the effect of chromatic dispersion, optical beat noise, shot noise, thermal noise, and—in the case of multichannel SCM—intermodulation distortion. The results of the IEEE 802.11b standard for wireless LAN.\u

Channel Characterisation and Link Budget of MIMO Configuration in Near Field Magnetic Communication

Traditional radio communication has gained significantly from using multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) architecture in the system. Many wireless applications, such as wireless LAN and cellular network, have adopted this technology to improve their system performance. However, the effect of MIMO systems has not been investigated in the case of inductive near field short range communications. The purpose of this paper is to explore a new method for increasing the magnetic communication range using MIMO. Three system models includingMISO, SIMO and MIMO are proposed to characterize the number of transmitters and receivers to the link. These models have helped to extend not only the range but also the communication channel in NFMIC

Magnetic Beamforming for Wireless Power Transfer

Magnetic resonant coupling (MRC) is an efficient method for realizing the near-field wireless power transfer (WPT). The use of multiple transmitters (TXs) each with one coil can be applied to enhance the WPT performance by focusing the magnetic fields from all TX coils in a beam toward the receiver (RX) coil, termed as "magnetic beamforming". In this paper, we study the optimal magnetic beamforming for an MRC-WPT system with multiple TXs and a single RX. We formulate an optimization problem to jointly design the currents flowing through different TXs so as to minimize the total power drawn from their voltage sources, subject to the minimum power required by the RX load as well as the TXs' constraints on the peak voltage and current. For the special case of identical TX resistances and neglecting all TXs' constraints on the peak voltage and current, we show that the optimal current magnitude of each TX is proportional to the mutual inductance between its TX coil and the RX coil. In general, the problem is a non-convex quadratically constrained quadratic programming (QCQP) problem, which is reformulated as a semidefinite programming (SDP) problem. We show that its semidefinite relaxation (SDR) is tight. Numerical results show that magnetic beamforming significantly enhances the deliverable power as well as the WPT efficiency over the uncoordinated benchmark scheme of equal current allocation.Comment: 13 Pages, 3 figures, submitted to IEEE ICASSP 201

Wireless Power Transfer: Survey and Roadmap

Wireless power transfer (WPT) technologies have been widely used in many areas, e.g., the charging of electric toothbrush, mobile phones, and electric vehicles. This paper introduces fundamental principles of three WPT technologies, i.e., inductive coupling-based WPT, magnetic resonant coupling-based WPT, and electromagnetic radiation-based WPT, together with discussions of their strengths and weaknesses. Main research themes are then presented, i.e., improving the transmission efficiency and distance, and designing multiple transmitters/receivers. The state-of-the-art techniques are reviewed and categorised. Several WPT applications are described. Open research challenges are then presented with a brief discussion of potential roadmap