IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 15, NO.

1, JANUARY 2000

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Wireless Transmission of Power and Information and Information for Cableless Linear Motor Drive
Junji Hirai, Member, IEEE, Tae-Woong Kim, Member, IEEE, and Atsuo Kawamura, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractIn previous papers, the authors introduced the wireless transmission of power and information (WTPI) for realizing the future manufacturing system which is free from the complexity of wiring for the power supply or control [1], [2]. In extension from these studies, the authors have attempted to apply the linear-type WTPI for realizing the maintenance-free drive and the multimover operation of a moving coil-type linear motor. This paper describes the basic concept of the WTPI and the analysis on the performance of the WTPI configured in the linear shape, thereafter introducing the preliminary test result on a prototype of the cableless linear pulse motor (CLLPM) which was constructed by integrating a linear pulse motor (LPM) with the associated driver and the linear WTPI for noncontact motion transfer. Index TermsCableless drive of linear pulse motor, linear-type WTPI, wireless transmission of power and information.

without the use of the feedback. In an ordinary case, however, the moving coil-type motors like the LPM carry the umbilical cables or wires for excitation of the winding and the associated sensor feedback. Consequently, the long-stroke or higher speed operation of the LPM is sometimes limited due to the wiring and maintenance problems. As an effective solution to those problems, the authors developed a cableless LPM (CLLPM) using the linear-type WTPI. In Section IV, the principle of the LPM drive is introduced, and the design consideration to integrate the driver hardware with the LPM is described. In Section V, the experimental results on the prototype CLLPM are shown, and Section VI concludes the paper. II. WIRELESS TRANSMISSION OF POWER AND INFORMATION

I. INTRODUCTION EGARDING the wireless transmission of power and information (WTPI), there are several papers describing similar technologies, including the previous ones by the authors [1], [2]. However, the practical design procedures such as the optimal dimensioning of the WTPI coupling have not been detailed [3][5]. From the industry applicability point of view, the concurrent transmission of power and information through the practically sized coupling cannot be achieved without solutions to the three problems: the transmission capabilities (power efficiency and data transmission bandwidth), the self-induced crosstalk (electromagnetic interference), and the environmental durability [3], [5]. Especially for the linear-type WTPI composed of a linearly stretched conductor and a movable core, the former two problems are critical due to the loose coupling of the magnetic flux. In Section II of this paper, the features of the WTPI are briefly mentioned, and the design parameters of the inductive coupling are derived from the equivalent circuits. In Section III, the performance of the coupling is evaluated from the viewpoints of the power transmission efficiency and the data transmission bandwidth. As regards the effective application of the WTPI, the authors successfully implemented the WTPI into the drive of the linear pulse motor (LPM). The LPM has been widely used because of its simple structure and easy control
Manuscript received August 10, 1998; revised June 30, 1999. This work was supported by the Japan Ministry of Education. Recommended by Associate Editor, M. Rahman. J. Hirai and T.-W. Kim are with Yaskawa Electric Corporation, Iruma-City, Saitama-Prefecture 358-8555, Japan. A. Kawamura is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Yokohama National University, Yokohama-City, Kanagawa-Prefecture 240-8501, Japan. Publisher Item Identifier S 0885-8993(00)00299-4.

A. WTPI Concept About 15 years ago, joint research on the noncontact power transmission was initiated by the Japan National Institute and Yaskawa Electric Corporation [6]. So far, several research activities have dealt with the similar studies on the noncontact power transmission [3], [4]. However, most of those activities have not covered the concurrent data transmission, except for one case where the data transmission is carried out through a separate capacitive channel [4]. Unlike in such a case with the composite and complex structures of the coupling, the authors of this paper tried to develop a full inductive WTPI in order to simplify the structure of the coupling and to make easier the interface with the field network. In the practical study by the authors, the full inductive WTPI is done either through the individual coupling for the transmission of power and information arranged adjacently to each other or by the overlapped transmission of power and data [2], [7]. The motion control using the thus proposed full inductive WTPI is generally composed as illustrated in Fig. 1. B. Inductive Coupling Design The inductive coupling has three different variations of type, i.e., rotary, separable, and linear, corresponding to the freedom in the relative motion available thereby [2]. For all of these three types, the basic coupling structures for the power transmission and data transmission are identical or similar. Unlike an ideal transformer, these inductive couplers inevitably have the incomplete linkage of magnetic flux, due to the added freedom in the motion by the couplings. The linear type, for example, has a certain amount of the flux leakage from the stretched primary conductor. For evaluation on the performance of the WTPI by considering such an incomplete magnetic flux coupling, an equiv-

08858993/00$10.00 2000 IEEE

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 15, NO. 1, JANUARY 2000

Fig. 1.

Motion control using full inductive WTPI.

Fig. 2.

Configuration of linear WTPI.

alent circuit is constructed and the design parameter is introduced. For the inductive WTPI to be used in the linear motion control, a high-frequency transformer is specially constructed in the linear shape, as illustrated in Fig. 2 [6]. In this configuration, the primary conductor is stretched and the secondary coil is wound on a toroidal or EI-shaped core which moves along the conductor with no mechanical contacts. The T-type electrical equivalent circuit is derived as shown in Fig. 3 from the magnetic field calculation near the parallel conductors located in the free space [8]. The equivalent circuit is not symmetric, because there is an almost complete linkage of the primary current from the secondary magnetic flux, while not vice versa due to a certain amount of flux leakage from the primary conductor. The mov-

able core is designed to have no air gaps along its magnetic path, and the leakage flux is negligibly small due to the high relative permeability of the core over 3000. On such assumptions, the of leakage inductances , , and the mutual inductance the equivalent circuit are calculated for the case with the movable EI-core as given next [2], [6]

(1)

(2)

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(3) Number of primary turn = number of secondary turn. Primary conductor radius. Primary conductor length. Primary conductor spacing. Slot height. Slot width. Core slot length. Coil-end length. Magnetic path length in core. Cross-section area of core. Permeability of core. III. TRANSMISSION PERFORMANCE The primary concern in the power transmission by the WTPI is to increase the power transmission efficiency defined as the ratio between the power input and power output of the coupling. The most important issue in the data transmission by the WTPI is to ensure a higher bandwidth and a higher signal-to-noise ratio in terms of the noise immunity at the same time. These transmission capabilities are evaluated using the above-mentioned equivalent circuit. A. Power Generation and Transmission The power loss in the inductive transmission exists both in the high-frequency power conversion and in the couplings. The loss in the power conversion by the hard switching is proportional to the product of the supply voltage, the load current, and the switching frequency, in addition to the product of the load current and the on-voltage drop of the switching device [9]. The conceivable losses in the couplings are the ohmic loss of the winding and the iron loss in the movable core material. With the increase in the primary conductor length the transmission efficiency decreases with the increment of the magnetizing current which makes the ohmic loss higher. With the increase of the high-frequency harmonics in the current, the loss increases due to the skin effect, and the iron loss increases too. Consequently, the transmission efficiency is largely improved with the use of soft-switching conversion. Fig. 4 shows the circuit diagram of a resonant pole plus current resonant inverter which the authors devised as the most suitable one for the power generation for the WTPI [7]. The advantageous features of this resonant inverter are summarized next. 1) The voltage drop due to the leakage inductance is canceled by a series capacitor . 2) The switching loss is less than that of the conventional current resonant inverter. and are decreased by the additional 3) Both ). capacitors ( 4) The transient current at the turn-off switching is relatively low and the zero voltage switching is possible. 5) The circuit is simple, because only four capacitors ) are required to be added to the conven( tional current resonant inverter.
Fig. 4. Resonant pole plus current resonant inverter.

Fig. 3. T-shaped equivalent circuit.

The capacitor is chosen so that the inverter switching frequency is tuned with the frequency of a series resonance and the leakage inductance. In the experiments the by switching frequency of the MOSFET-driven inverter is 30 kHz. The total (primary plus secondary) leakage inductance of the linear type is 117 H. Therefore, the series is chosen to be 0.24 F. capacitor B. High-Speed Data Transmission In the WTPI a high-speed field-network is used for the axis servo motion control and the sensor feedback. Therefore, the data transmission speed of the network needs to be more than several mega bits per second (Mbps) [2]. In the experiments the authors used a modified high-level data link control (HDLC) among several conceivable protocols for the FA communication and employed a half-duplex mode using a twisted wire for simplifying the physical layer of the communication [10]. This network is electrically isolated by pulse transformers and fully compatible with the inductive WTPI and is configurable in a master and multislave topology with a daisy chain connection which is favorable in view of flexibility in reconfiguring the machines or the production lines. A high-speed communication through the network is used not only for sequence controls, but also for servo controls. Therefore, the speed of the data transmission through the inductive couplings as well as the network must be more than several mega bits per second. For the discussion on the bandwidth required for such a level of data speed, the presence of the stray capacitance and the winding resistance should be taken into account in the extended equivalent circuit. Furthermore, the signal

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 15, NO. 1, JANUARY 2000

Fig. 5. Extended T-type equivalent circuit for data transmission.

attenuation along the feeder wires needs to be considered in the as shown in Fig. 5 [11]. form of the transfer function Fig. 6 shows the measured frequency response characteristics of the linear type and the result of the calculation from the extended equivalent circuit in Fig. 5. From these characteristics, the available bandwidth of the data transmission can be known. For the above-mentioned dimensional properties, the transmission bandwidth is calculated on assumption of the following parameter values in the equivalent circuit. H( mm). Self-inductance , . Winding resistance ( mm). Coupling coefficient . Load resistance pF. Stray capacitance . Output resistance . Characteristic impedance dB/m at 5 MHz. Attenuation rate . Propagation constant Available bandwidth 8.2 MHz (for the primary conmm). ductor length The bandwidth thus calculated and measured seems to be sufficient for the data transmission of several megabits per second (Mbps) which is generally necessary for the servo control including the LPM drive. IV. CABLELESS LINEAR PULSE MOTOR Prior to application of the WTPI to the cableless LPM drive, the principle of the LPM drive is reviewed to grasp what control information needs to be transmitted by way of the WTPI coupling. A. LPM Control Principle Fig. 7 shows the structure of a four-phase two-winding LPM used in this study. On the mover poles and and and , the excitation windings ( and windings) are wound and the excitation currents and are fed from the external current ( : source. There is the mechanical phase difference of tooth pitch) between and phases. On the assumption that there is no flux leakage in the structure of LPM, the magnetic equivalent circuit is drawn for phase as

Fig. 6.

Frequency response of data transmission.

Fig. 7.

Structure of linear pulse motor.

Fig. 8. Equivalent magnetic circuit of LPM.

shown in Fig. 8, where the magnetomotive force by the phase excitation is and that by the permanent magnet is ( : equivalent fictitious current).

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The magnetic conductance of air gap is a function of the mover position . The conductance of the stator yoke is . In consideration of the teeth arrangement and the symmetry of the configuration and on the premise that the variable part of the magnetic conductance varies sinusoidally with the position , as given by (4), the flux which flows through the stator caused by -phase excitation yoke and the total flux are given by (5) and (6) tooth pitch (4)

(11) When the permeance of the yoke steel is much greater than that of air gap and is not larger than the equivalent fictitious current corresponding to the magnetomotive force of the perand is approxmanent magnet, then imated by (12)

(5)

To make a positioning control by generating the thrust force of the LPM according to (12), the position reference is transmitted by way of the linear WTPI to the built-in driver which is integrated with the motor as explained next. B. Integrating Motor with Driver and WTPI

(6) phase, the From the above two equations and those for stored in the air gap can be obtained electromagnetic energy as shown in (7) transverse where the current vector is given as the inductance matrix is given as (7) and

As mentioned before, for the motion control through the WTPI the driver needs to be mounted on the moving portion preferably in the integral configuration with the motor as shown in Fig. 9. In order to minimize the overall dimension of the integral motor, a heatsink was designed for absorbing the heat dissipation of both the MOSFETs and the LPM mover, and the WTPI moving core structure was combined with the driver portion into one body. As regards the primary conductors for the WTPI (the power transmission and data transmission), they were accommodated in the linear bearing mechanism to keep constant the relative positioning of the coupling. V. CLLPM PROTOTYPE

(8) where it is shown in (8a), given at the bottom of the page. , siSo as to settle the mover at command position nusoidal currents are fed to the two windings with the electrical phase angle of 90 between and phases (9) Fig. 10 shows the general view of a prototype CLLPM using the LPM thus integrated with the driver and the linear WTPI. With this configuration, control or data sensing can be made on the LPM mover head, independently and regardless of its position on the linear traveling path. Unlike the case with the conventional cable-based system, the multiple number of LPM heads can be driven simultaneously on the common path, and no cable maintenance works are needed even in the higher speed operation [12]. In Table I, the dimensional properties and physical constants of the tested LPM are shown. Fig. 11 displays the positioning response of the CLLPM. At every 2 ms, the position reference is given from the controller to the built-in driver, and the actual position and the status data are fed back to the controller through the field network and the data transmission channel of

(10) Here, the thrust force which settles the mover at or around the command position is obtained as (11) by differentiating the electromagnetic energy

(8a)

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 15, NO. 1, JANUARY 2000

Fig. 9.

Integral structure for CLLPM.

PROPERTIES

AND

TABLE I PHYSICAL CONSTANTS TESTED LPM

OF

Fig. 10.

Prototype CLLPM.

the WTPI. The satisfactory positioning response to the rampshaped position command is recognized for the prototype due to the sufficient power supply and high-speed data transmission through the linear coupling which was designed by accounting for the performances discussed in Section III. In Table II, the dimensional properties and the transmission performances of the linear WTPI are shown with the signal-tonoise ratio in terms of the immunity from the crosstalk by the concurrent power transmission. VI. CONCLUSIONS In extension from the previous studies, the authors attempted to apply the WTPI for realizing the cableless maintenance-free and multimover operation of a moving coil-type linear motor. In this paper, the features of the WTPI were briefly described first, and the design parameters of the inductive coupling were derived from the equivalent circuits. Then, the transmission performance of the coupling was evaluated from the viewpoint of the efficiency in the power transmission and the bandwidth for the data transmission. After clarifying the LPM drive principle the authors attempted to apply thus established WTPI technology for realizing cable maintenance-free and multimover operation of the LPM which used to carry the umbilical cables or wires for power supply and the related sensor feedback. Additional design consideration on compacting the drive hardware such

TABLE II DIMENSIONAL PROPERTIES AND TRANSMISSION PERFORMANCES LINEAR WTPI

OF

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Fig. 11.

Positioning response of CLLPM.

as the shared heatsink was also made for the integral structure of CLLPM. In conclusion, the satisfactory test results were confirmed by the ramp-shaped positioning test with a prototype CLLPM which was constructed in integration of the LPM with the driver and the linear WTPI. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors wish to thank Profs. G. Henneberger, R. W. DeDoncker, F. Schoppe, and A. Nagel of RWTH, Aachen, Germany, for their valuable technical suggestions.

REFERENCES
[1] A. Kawamura, J. Hirai, and Y. Aoyama, Autonomous decentralized manufacturing system using high speed network with inductive transmission of data and power, in IEEE IECON, Taipei, Taiwan, 1996, pp. 940945. [2] Y. Hiraga, J. Hirai, and A. Kawamura, Decentralized control of machines with the use of inductive transmission of power and signal, in IEEE IAS Annu. Meeting, 1994, pp. 875881. [3] T. Nonaka and N. Takahashi, Direct finite element analysis of flux and current distribution under specified conditions, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. MAG-18, Mar. 1982. [4] T. Nonaka, N. Takahashi, and T. Fujiwara, Analysis of induction motors by using finite element method taking into account of external power source, in Papers for Technical Meeting on Rotating Machines IEEJ, Feb. 1980, p. RM-809. [5] J. Hirai and Y. Aoyama, Autonomous hydraulic power generating apparatus, Japanese Patent Application 341 410, 1993. [6] K. W. Klontz, D. Divan, D. Novotony, and R. Lorenz, Contactless power delivery for mining applications, in IEEE IAS, 1991, pp. 12631269. [7] A. Kawamura, K. Ishioka, and J. Hirai, Wireless transmission of power and information through one high frequency resonant ac link inverter for robot manipulator applications, IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat., vol. 32, May/June 1996. [8] J. Hirai, Load-dispatching apparatus having improved power supply cut-off, U.S. Patent 5 327 033, July 5, 1994.

[9] T. Katsuma, T. Koba, Y. Nitta, and Y. Konoha, Surface motor, Yaskawa Tech. Rep., vol. 59, 1995. [10] A. Esser and H. C. Skudelny, A new approach to power supply for robots, IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat., vol. 27, no. 5, 1991. [11] R. G. Hoft, Semiconductor Power Electronics. New York: Van Nostrand, 1996. [12] M. Sanada and Y. Takeda, Vibration suppression for linear pulse motor, in IEEE IAS Annu. Meeting, 1994, pp. 517521. [13] Electrical Equipment of Industrial Machines Serial Data Link for Real-Time Communication Between Controls and Drives, IEC Standard 1491, Nov. 1995. [14] High Level Data Link Control Procedure, Japan Industry Standard (JIS) X 5105-5107, 1987. [15] Y. Kouya and Yaskawa Elec. Co., Contactless power supply, Japanese Patent 1 184 108, 1983. [16] A. Esser and A. Nagel, Contactless high speed transmission integrated in a compact rotatable transformer, in EPE, 1993. [17] TDK High-Frequency Magnetic Products Manual, 1994. [18] J. Hirai, Y. Nitta, Y. Konoha, and J. D. Payne, Two dimensional linear pulse motor and its application to surface drive, LDIA Nagasaki, 1995. [19] J. D. Payne, Robotworld-unrolled motors turn assembly on its head, Industrial Robot, vol. 20, no. 1, 1993.

Junji Hirai (S75M77), for a photograph and biography, see this issue, p. 20.

Tae-Woong Kim (S93M96), for a photograph and biography, see this issue, p. 20.

Atsuo Kawamura (S77M81SM96), for a photograph and biography, see this issue, p. 20.