IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 48, NO.

12, DECEMBER 2013

2989

Resonant Regulating Rectifiers (3R) Operating for

6.78 MHz Resonant Wireless Power Transfer (RWPT)
Jun-Han Choi, Student Member, IEEE, Sung-Ku Yeo, Seho Park, Jeong-Seok Lee, Member, IEEE, and
Gyu-Hyeong Cho, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractThe design of a Resonant Regulating Rectifier (3R)

capable of switching-mode operation is presented. The proposed 3R is a highly efficient receiver circuit intended for use
in Resonant Wireless Power Transfer (RWPT) application with
a 6.78 MHz resonant frequency. Owing to the inductance of
resonant coils, the 3R does not require any additional inductor
for the switching-mode regulation. The transmitted power via the
RWPT with the 3R ranges from 0 W to 6 W, and its peak efficiency reaches 86%. It employs the Continuous Conduction Mode
(CCM) and Discontinuous Conduction Mode (DCM) for different
output power levels. This helps to increase the output power and
to lower the voltage stress on the transistor. Fabricated in 0.35 m
BCD technology, the 3R circuit occupies an area of 2.35x2.35 mm.
The functionality of the 3R is successfully demonstrated using a
transmitter circuit with resonant coils.
Index TermsA4WP, frequency 6.78 MHz, frequency
13.56 MHz, inductive power transmission, IPT, medium wireless
power, phasor transformation, Qi, receiver circuit, resonant
charger, resonant regulating rectifiers, resonant tanks, resonant
wireless power transfer, RWPT, secondary pwm control, wireless
battery charger, wireless charger, wireless power, wireless power
transfer, wireless power transmission, WPT, wireless power 5 W,
wireless power 6 W, wireless power control, WPC, wireless SMPS,
wireless voltage control.

I. INTRODUCTION

ECENTLY, Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) technology

has become a popular research subject again, especially
in relation to cellular phone-charger market. Since Tesla first
suggested the concept of WPT, it has slowly evolved for more
than one hundred years. Researchers have tested the possibility
of the WPT for various applications ranging from electrical cars
to bio-medical applications, as categorized in Table I. However,
a majority of these applications have failed to be commercialized or have remained as further research items. What blocked
the WPT from becoming more wide spread in the consumer
market? There may be a number of different reasons depending
on the cases, but seen from a distance, the major issues are related to cost, efficiency and spatial freedom.

Manuscript received April 19, 2013; revised October 03, 2013; accepted
October 04, 2013. Date of current version November 20, 2013. This paper
was approved by Guest Editor Piero Malcovati.
J.-H. Choi and G.-H. Cho are with the Department of Electrical Engineering,
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon 305701, Korea (e-mail: junhan.choi@kaist.ac.kr).
S.-K. Yeo, S. Park, and J.-S. Lee are with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd,
Suwon, Gyeonggi-do, Korea.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSSC.2013.2287592

Given that the WPT system is composed of two separate

parts, the transmitter and the receiver, there is a disadvantage in
terms of cost and efficiency compared with plugged-in system.
Therefore, the key issue is convenience before people will
buy WPT applications, and this is closely related to the spatial
freedom. A specific WPT application can be established in the
consumer market only when its spatial freedom outweighs cost
and efficiency issues. Currently, the wireless phone-charger
market also faces with the similar problems.
WPTs can be classified into two types: inductively coupled
power transfer (IPT) [1] and resonant wireless power transfer
(RWPT) systems [2][6]. In this paper, RWPT is defined as
any WPT method using resonant coupling. Generally speaking,
the IPT has higher efficiency but requires very short distances
and precise alignment between the transmitter and the receiver.
On the other hand, the RWPT allows longer distances and less
precise alignment under a handicap of somewhat lower efficiency. In the WPT phone-charger field, IPT products have developed near completion [1], and numerous products have been
released in the last few years. Meanwhile, some companies and
researchers have attempted to develop the RWPT systems [2],
[3], but few of which are feasible for completed system have
appeared thus far. Table I estimates the maturity of each technology. If a RWPT set is made successfully, it can be one of the
solutions for the feet-stuck situation of the medium power WPT
market.
In the RWPT, transmitter and receiver coils do not use a core
material, whereas the IPT uses cores material in the center of
the coils. This characteristic comes from the fact that the RWPT
uses loosely coupled coils to achieve better spatial freedom.
However, it is very difficult to ensure a resonant condition with
palm-sized coils at a low frequency such as several hundred
of at least several MHz is
kHz; a resonant frequency
required. Our research focuses on the development of a RWPT
system that supports cellular phone chargers by transferring
of 6.78 MHz.
medium power of around 5 W using a fixed
The WPT system is consisted of two basic parts: the transmitter and the receiver. In terms of its systematic design, however, it is better to divide the system into three parts: the transmitter part, the receiver part, and the resonant tanks part on both
sides, as shown in Fig. 1. The overall efficiency can be calculated by multiplying the efficiency values of the respective
parts. Among them, the efficiency of the receiver part is most
important, as it is specially related to the thermal emission of the
hands-on mobile device and, therefore, has to meet strict specifications. Furthermore, regarding recent smartphones which already utilize most of their thermal margin on the application
processors, the importance of designing the receiver circuit with
high efficiency for a WPT application is even greater now.

0018-9200 2013 IEEE

2990

IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 48, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2013

TABLE I
RESEARCH TRENDS OF RELATED TO WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER (WPT) AND THE MATURITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Fig. 1. Conventional wireless power transfer (WPT) system.

In this paper, we suggest new receiver circuits for the RWPT,

with the term, Resonant Regulating Rectifier (3R), introducing
a combination between a simple structure and high efficiency.
The adjective resonant is added to 3R, because it works under
the presence of the resonant condition. This paper introduces
two different receiver circuits, one-switch 3R and three-switch
3R. There is a big difference in regulation topologies, but are
many common features in control blocks in these circuits. The
one-switch 3R is explained in Section II first, including its comparison to conventional receiver circuits. Solving the problems
in the one-switch 3R, the three-switch 3R circuit is evolved and
analyzed in Section III. In Section IV, several important circuits
and related techniques are discussed. The experimental results
and performances levels of 3R are provided in Section V, and
the conclusions follow in Section VI.
II. INITIAL CONCEPT OF A RESONANT REGULATING
RECTIFIER (3R)
A. Design Principles of a WPT Receiver Circuit and the
Structure of the One-Switch 3R
For most power converter circuits, output voltage regulation
is the main purpose, and this is much the same for the WPT
systems. A regulating technique can be implemented in either
the transmitter [4], [5] or the receiver [1], [3], [6]. It can vary
depending on the requirements of the target application, such
as the required speed of the response and the output voltage
tolerance that application can endure. If the voltage regulation
mechanism of the WPT is placed in the transmitter, the overall
system can take advantage of improved cost and efficiency, but
the error signal between the output voltage and the reference
voltage needs to be transmitted from the receiver wirelessly. It
usually takes several period cycles to process the signal, which

brings about a delayed response and oscillation of the output

voltage for a transient load change. Because charging the battery of a cellular phone with a level of 5 W requires both a rapid
response and precise voltage conditioning, the regulating function has to be placed in the receiver circuit.
Usually, the conventional receiver circuits adopted in WPT
consumer electronics have nearly identical structures with a
two-step design consisting two separate parts, a rectifier and a
step-down converter. The latter part can be an LDO or a buck
DC-DC converter, as shown in Fig. 1. The LDO is simpler
with higher loss levels, while the buck DC-DC converter has
higher efficiency but requires an extra inductor, which causes a
burdensome increase in cost and interferes with the design of
the receiver board.
A switching topology without an extra inductor can increase
the efficiency and lower the cost, providing simplicity for the design of the board. The design concept of Fig. 2 is a good starting
point, which meets these requirements. Controlling the rectified
current
with pulse width modulation (PWM) control of
an
switch is the underlying concept of the idea. Meanwhile,
by shorting
in the off-duty state, the voltage stress on
is
eliminated and the resonant current
freewheels. The principal method of controlling
is similar to those appearing in
previous papers [4], [7]; these methods were termed resonant
switching and the integral cycle mode, respectively. Compared
to both papers, in which the transmitter controls
, the control
mechanism is in the receiver part in this paper.
While simulating the above topology, we soon realized that
shorting
in the off-duty state can cause several serious
problems, such as an excessively rising
and an increase in
the conduction loss of the resonant coils and
. Furthermore,
because
flows back and forth, the requirement of a body

CHOI et al.: RESONANT REGULATING RECTIFIERS (3R) OPERATING FOR 6.78 MHz RESONANT WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER (RWPT)

2991

Fig. 2. Initial concepts of a regulating rectifier.

Fig. 3. Resonant Regulating Rectifier (3R) topologies with the estimated waveforms: (a) Initial sub-switch
topology (b) improved serial sub-switch
and limiting capacitor
topology, and (c) simplified limiting capacitor
topology, for managing IRS in the off-duty state.

switching technique is inevitable. Putting a limiting capacitor

in series with
reduces
in the off-duty state as
shown in Fig. 3(b), and this also helps reduce the conduction
losses proportional to
. Moreover, inserting
makes
the voltage stress on
manageable during the off-duty state.
The circuit with a sole
, also shown in Fig. 3(c), can do
the same job accomplished by the circuit in Fig. 3(b). The
operations of both circuits are identical in on- and off-duty
states. As a result, we chose the circuit shown in Fig. 3(c) as the
first 3R. Since there is no need for body switching, controlling
the switch is relatively easy. We term this one-switch 3R to
differentiate it from the latter one in Section III.
B. Optimizing the One-Switch 3R and Introducing V-I Curves
There is a prior condition in which the capacitive reactance
of
should be several times larger than the input impedance
of the full bridge rectifier at the given
. This is necessary because most of the resonant current should flow into the rectifier.
Furthermore, the designers of resonant tanks should consider
the resonant condition, especially for the case of shifting
due to the parallel connection between
and the rectifier, as

shown in Fig. 4(a). Optimizing the impedance and interpreting

the appropriate resonant condition with the rectifier are difficult
tasks in a frequency range of several MHz. For the systematical analysis, we develop
curves through a simulation and
compared them depending on
, as shown in Fig. 4.
In the
curves shown in Fig. 4(b), the -axis and -axes
represent
and
or
in the resonant coil, respectively.
Here, the rectified energy
and the buffered energy
are the two key criteria for optimizing the capacitance
of
. In the RWPT system, the energy or power travels
through the coils, so the area of
curve can be considered as transferred energy from the transmitter to the receiver
resonant tanks. Similar to that, the
curve, which is
, imitates the transferred energy from the resonant tank to
the rectifier output. Next, the area of
is the difference
between
and
curves in Fig. 4(b), and it
describes the temporally stored energy in
at each cycle.
However, since these
curves uses the cylindrical coordinate, the area does not exactly represent the energy or the
power. Therefore,
and
are somewhat difficult to
represent, but we named it in convenience.

2992

IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 48, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2013

Fig. 4. To optimize the limiting capacitor

, (a) a simple rectifier circuit is introduced with the mark of the current path of
and
, after which
are compared to attain the optimum value of
at a
(b) current and voltage waveforms are converted to I-V curves. (c) Simulated curves with varying
maximum load condition.

If the resonant condition is well maintained under various

values, the radius and the area of
during the half
phase of a resonant period will not be changed. In particular,
the radius of
should be viewed in detail. In Fig. 4(c), the
circuit is simulated with various
to
ratios from 0 to 1
with a 1 A load current
and a 5 V
; the resonant
condition is changed when
is larger than 0.5
. From
the simulation result, a range of
value can be chosen as
long as the value does not exceed the maximum
, which is
0.5
.
C. Easing Voltage Stress
Previously, we explained briefly the necessity of
, but it
is better to understand the role of
if the detailed operation
is presented.
is the stored energy in
at the beginning of the phase change, in Fig. 4(c);
and
have a
proportional relationship and
itself is not dissipative energy.
is defined as the differential voltage of
and
or the voltage across
; it is closely related to
,
which is the rectifier output voltage. In the on-duty state,
is connected to
and limits
so that it is not increased
by more than
, while
limits
lower than
during the off-duty state, where
is the diode drop
voltage.
The major role of
is to block
so that it does not rise
too high during the off-duty state. Detailed voltage and current
waveforms of the one-switch 3R are descried in Fig. 5. During
the on-duty state,
increases gradually, and most of the current turns into
. During the off-duty state,
decreases to
zero, but a small amount of
charges
back and forth.
When the
state is changed from the on-duty to the off-duty
state,
increases instantly, as the only remaining current

Fig. 5. Current control mechanism of the one-switch 3R.

path of
in Fig. 4(a) is that with
. The amount of inrush current into
at the switching moment determines the
value, which is proportional to the
value of the prior
phase. Because
has a linear relationship with the load current
and the output power
and
have an effect on the peak
level. In other words, the peak
increases when
rises.
In the view point of the circuit design, the highest value of the
terminal voltage is very important;
is the highest voltage
in the proposed one-switch 3R circuit. The explicit
and the
relationship with the transistor break-down voltage
are established as follows:
(1)

CHOI et al.: RESONANT REGULATING RECTIFIERS (3R) OPERATING FOR 6.78 MHz RESONANT WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER (RWPT)

2993

Fig. 6. Current control mechanisms in (a) the Discontinuous Conduction Mode (DCM) (b) Continuous Conduction Mode (CCM).

With LDMOS transistors,

can endure several tens of
voltage. However, because there is a trade-off relationship
between the break-down voltage and the mobility of the transistor, the MOS transistors with lower break-down voltages
are desirable. Therefore, all of the parameters, including
and
, are closely related in the
one-switch 3R circuit design. For example, the circuit with
W shows a 60 V peak
,a
value that the design with 40 V LDMOS cannot withstand.
Although the one-switch 3R circuit met the conceptual requirements of a switching converter without an extra inductor,
its performance was not satisfactory due to the low
and
the low efficiency. First,
could not reach the expected
level. The level of the peak
value exceeded the voltage
that the
switch could hold when
increased. With a
higher
device,
could be increased but the circuit would suffer more from undesirable parasitic effects. Secondly, the efficiency was poorer than that of conventional WPT
receiver ICs. Considering the conduction loss from an extra inductor in the buck converter and the drop-out voltage of the
LDO, the one-switch 3R did not show an impressive result.
III. PROPOSED 3R
In this section, a different type of resonant regulating rectifier
(3R) is introduced. It uses a new type of switching method to
regulate the output voltage. Its design is explained in detail by
modeling an equivalent inductor to derive the duty for the
equation.
A. The Proposed 3R and the Operation
We confirmed that the one-switch topology worked and that
the duty of
with a receiver circuit was successfully implemented. However, we decided to create another version of 3R in
order to improve the
and efficiency. To do so, the problem
was at the level of
. Specifically, the peak current level was
too high to reduce the conduction loss, which is calculated by
, where
represents the DC resistance of the resonant coils. If we can change the shape of
from that shown
in Fig. 6(a) to that shown in Fig. 6(b), the RMS current can be
decreased while keeping the average current at the same level.
Moreover, the
voltage will not be a big problem because
the current in the off-duty state release the voltage stress. For
convenience, we refer to the mechanisms in Figs. 6(a) and (b)

Fig. 7. The proposed three-switch 3R.

as the Discontinuous Conduction Mode (DCM) and the Continuous Conduction Mode (CCM), respectively.
In order to support the CCM, a new 3R circuit is derived, as
shown in Fig. 7. This 3R consist of three switches,
and
, along with two capacitors, the output capacitor
and the flying capacitor
. The key of switching sequence
of the three-switch 3R is to control
up and down via an integral cycle mode, where on or off switching is determined within
half of the resonant cycle [7]. Fig. 8 shows the operations in the
CCM and DCM, respectively, where the waveform of
differs depending on the case. In the on-duty state in the CCM,
both
and
are closed and
is open, where
and
are connected in parallel, as shown in Fig. 8(a). While
in the off-duty state in the CCM, both capacitors are stacked in
a series with opposite switch statuses. Therefore, the resonant
current
charges the capacitors in parallel
or
in series
, alternately, while alternating
between
and
for each duty. While in the on-duty
state in the DCM, the switch statuses are identical to that in the
CCM, as shown in Fig. 8(b). During the off-duty state in the
DCM, however,
becomes zero due to opening of all three
switches, and
dramatically increases depending on
and the amount of
induced. In fact, the operation of the
DCM is identical to that in the one-switch 3R, as introduced
in Section II.
The magnitudes of
and
follow simple dynamics
under a resonant condition. When
is low, the resonant current
increases slowly, whereas when
is high, the current is decreased or is reduced to zero. If we consider the envelope magnitudes only in CCM, the envelope of
and
behaves akin to the current and voltage in a buck-type switching

2994

IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 48, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2013

Fig. 8. Operation principle of 3R, depending on (a) the CCM and (b) the DCM.

Fig. 9. Phasor transformation from (a) a rotational system to (b) a stationary system.

DC-DC converter. Meanwhile in the DCM,

is instantly decreased to zero immediately when entering the off-duty state
such that
is regulated more precisely under a light load.
B. Modeling a WPT System With Phasor Transformation
The proposed 3R uses the inductance of the resonant tanks
for regulating the voltage. For example, the
peak cannot
change instantly, which means that there is a type of force similar to the force an inductor creates. In fact, there is a very useful
method for interpreting such a case, called phasor transformation [8]. It is used to analyze the characteristics of a series resonant converter quantitatively. In Fig. 9, a simple example is
shown in which a rotational system is transformed into a stationary system. In this Figure, the peak envelope of
at the
input and output node in a rotational system is identical to the
current waveforms in a stationary system. Therefore, the frequency component at a given
can be deleted and we can
concentrate on designing the topology.

With the phasor transformation, the resonant tanks can be abstracted equivalently to a single inductor at a value which is four
times of the leakage inductance
. Because the resonant
coils
usually have a very low coupling ratio
, the value
of
is nearly equal to the value of
. As a result, we
can assume the inductance equivalent to
.
Applying phasor transformation, we can model the entire
system as a simple structure, but it is still an AC-AC converter
as shown in Fig. 10. To simplify this even more, the Class-E
amplifier and the rectifier can be transformed into ideal transformers, after which the transformers are abstracted in a single
inductor. The final version of the abstracted model is somewhat
simple: an inductor with equivalent DC resistance
and the 3R circuit. Here, the
includes every resistive
parasitic.
The phasor transformation, however, is not a useful tool for a
conventional two-step receiver circuit whose structure consists
of a rectifier and a step-down converter, but is only useful when
the peak envelope of
changes. Therefore, only a one-step

CHOI et al.: RESONANT REGULATING RECTIFIERS (3R) OPERATING FOR 6.78 MHz RESONANT WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER (RWPT)

2995

Fig. 10. Class-E and rectifier are modeled as ideal transformers. In this case, the circuit can be created in an abstracted form with a single inductor. Equivalent
was introduced to model the parasitic effects that cause conduction losses.
DC resistance

circuit using resonant switching or an integral cycle mode can

have an advantage when using this method [4], [7].
Here, one-step circuit means the circuit that is impossible to
be separated into two different parts, in an analytical manner.
Structurally, both one-switch 3R and three-switch 3R consist of
a full-bridge rectifier and MOSFET switches, so it could be seen
as another modification of the conventional receiver circuit with
two parts. However, MOSFET switches alone cannot work by
themselves and operations of full-bridge rectifier of both 3Rs are
different from that of the two-step circuit. Therefore, in order to
analyze both 3Rs, we need to deal with them as one-step AC-DC
converters.
C. 3Rs Duty-

Relationship

Merging the abstracted model with the 3R circuit, a topology

of the DC-DC converter results, as shown in Fig. 11(a). Ignoring
, we can calculate the
to
relationship according to the duty, by using the voltage-second balance relationship. The result is as follows:
(2)
when on-duty,

, when off-duty,

,
(3)

graph is featured by the dotted

In Fig. 11(b), a duty vs.
line. The distinctive feature is that
is regulated between
and half of
. In fact, 3R in the CCM cannot secure a
regulating duty when the load current is very small. Furthermore, if
is applied, the duty vs.
graph becomes
somewhat degraded, which is the solid line in Fig. 11(b). Comparing the dotted line and the solid line, we can anticipate that an
unwanted nonlinear effect can arise due to
. In the experiments, we actually observed the slanted envelope waveform
(dotted line) of
, as shown in Fig. 11(c). The same happens
when the inductance is small and
is large in a conventional SMPS.
In conclusion, it was demonstrated that the 3R with the RWPT
system is a switching power converter to which PWM control can be applied. Moreover, by analyzing the duty vs.
graph, we found that a higher duty is more efficient. There is another possibility that
should be adjustable in order to keep
the duty high.
D. Optimizing Between CCM and DCM
As described in Fig. 8, the on-duty states of the CCM and
DCM are identical, but the off-duty states of each mode are

Fig. 11. (a) The abstracted model of 3R with the WPT system, (b) the
relationship, and (c) the slanted
waveform.
duty-

different. State flow diagram is in shown in Fig. 12(a) and a

mode changing event has to be arranged.
As touched upon above, each the CCM and DCM has its own
range of
, which is advantageous for specific case. The
CCM has higher efficiency than the DCM, but the regulation of
fails when
is very small, as shown in Fig. 12(b). On
the other hand, DCM has a good regulation characteristic for a
low
. Actually, when
is low, the efficiency does not
become a problem because the static power loss of the WPT is
relatively high. However, because
rises depending on the
level of
, as in the one-switch 3R in Section II, the DCM

2996

IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 48, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2013

the DCM only works when

is lower than 1 W. Therefore, we only need to consider the peak of
when
is
.
It was noted that
in Fig. 4 is not dissipated energy in
in Section II. This is mostly true and the efficiency and
with
value of 0 to 0.5
do not change greatly.
However, precisely,
does have an effect on the efficiency
because
increases in keeping with
, creating conduction loss more in the coils. Therefore, if there is no other
problem such as MOS break-down and reliability or noise issues, it would be better to reduce
. As a result, to determine
, both the reliability of
and the efficiency have to be
considered together.
IV. KEY BLOCKS AND ITS DESIGN TECHNIQUES

Fig. 12. (a) State flow diagram for the CCM and DCM mode change and (b) a
.
graph to define the appropriated reference of the output power,

cannot be used at high

due to avoiding the break-down
of the MOS transistor.
The maximum
depends on how much power the transmitter can push to the receiver. When the transmitter is set to
be capable of 6 W
for the WPT, the fail position of the
voltage regulation with the CCM is where
is slightly
less than 1 W. Therefore, we posed a mode changing point
at 1 W. In this way, we can guarantee the regulation ability of 3R for entire range of
, and take advantage
of the improved efficiency as much as possible by spanning the
CCM region.
E. Increased

and Reduced

With a continuously flowing

in the CCM, increased performance not only for better efficiency but also pertaining to the
capability
are obtained. The increased efficiency can be
easily anticipated because the RMS current is decreased with the
same output current, as noted earlier. In fact, the impressive result comes from
capability.
is fixed to
in the
CCM such that we do not have to worry about
rising with
a high
. As a result,
is not limited by the voltage
stress on
, which is why the one-switch 3R cannot lead to a
high
. In other words,
and
do not have correlation in the CCM. Furthermore, this leads to the possibility of a
further improvement when using a lower break-down transistor
with greater mobility in the future.
In the DCM, the operation of the proposed 3R in Section III
is identical to that of the one-switch 3R in Section II; the
and
relationship is also identical in the DCM. However,

All of the system blocks are displayed in Fig. 13. The basic
requirements of the 3R circuits were to support 5 W
and
operation. Among the frequencies of 6.78 or 13.56 MHz, at
which most RWPTs operate [2][6], the 3R uses 6.78 MHz for
the
. There is another important frequency figure, which is
the PWM frequency
. The
was set to 848 kHz,
which is in sync with
and is one eighth of
. In other
words, eight resonant cycles are used for one duty period.
Originally, our goal was to implement a complete receiver
IC. However, we chose to fabricate the switching converter
block first, owing to the complexity of the 3R receiver board.
As a result, the rectifier was excluded from IC fabrication
process. Instead, it was assembled outside with Schottky diodes
. On the other hand, IC components, including three
main switches and some other peripherals, were successfully
implemented, marked with the gray background in Fig. 13.
In the figure, the trail of the feedback loop of the 3R follows
the dotted arrows, passing through a resistive voltage divider, an
OTA with a compensation filter, a comparator with a saw-tooth
waveform, a latch for quantizing the duty, the gate drivers, and
lastly, the switches. Given that
is around 1 MHz, most
of the above circuits do not have to work around
, except
for the circuits related to synchronization. The synchronizing
technique is explained in the following chapters.
The mode change between the CCM and DCM is accomplished with an external signal, as shown in Fig. 13, and there
are three-bit duty information ports coming out from a simple
three-bit counter. These three-bit ports can be used as a duty
monitor optionally. As stated in Section III, a high duty is
preferable for better efficiency. Therefore, we added a digital
feedback, which is optional. We tested the 3R design with
or without the digital feedback component, which will be
explained in detail.
A. ZCS and the Sync Block
Zero Current Switching (ZCS) improves the efficiency as
well as the switching noise. Therefore, it is crucial for the on/off
switching time to synchronize with the
zero-crossing time,
as shown in Fig. 14(a). There are two means of synchronization, as shown in the circuit in Fig. 14(b): one is a differential comparator sync and the other is an inverter sync. While in
the on-duty state in both the CCM and DCM, a simple inverter
consisting of a high voltage MOS is enough to ensure the ZCS

CHOI et al.: RESONANT REGULATING RECTIFIERS (3R) OPERATING FOR 6.78 MHz RESONANT WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER (RWPT)

2997

Fig. 13. The complete system block diagram is displayed. IC parts are shown with a grey background, and the feedback loop path is indicated by a dotted arrow.

Fig. 14. (a) For zero current switching (ZCS), (b) sync control is needed; (c) a specific delay
.

sync. While in the off-duty state in the DCM, however,

is charged by
in one direction, which keeps the
and
nodes floating as shown in the waveforms of Fig. 14(c).
Therefore, the comparator sync with a forced offset of
has to be used for faultless operation. These inverter sync and
comparator sync are merged into one pulse by a SEL switch. The
merged pulse is intentionally delayed by
to formulate CLK.
Then, CLK is used for the D-FF clock in Fig. 13 to accomplish
ZCS. In this case, the additional delay
is controlled outside
by a four-bit digital input in order to compensate for the delay

has to be applied in order to match the half resonant cycle and

. That is, the sum of

and
is set to half the period of
to secure a zero-crossing time of
by creating 180-degree
phase lag.
B. Boost Bias Generator
The Boost Bias Generator (BBG) in Fig. 15(a) is designed to
drive the
and
gates in Fig. 13. In the CCM, the peak
voltage of
is fixed at
, though it can be much higher
in the DCM. Therefore, limiting the gate bias voltage to a proper
value is important to prevent a break-down of the gate oxide

2998

IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 48, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2013

Fig. 15. (a) Boost Bias Generator (BBG) Circuit and (b)
BBG relationship.

to

from

Fig. 16. IC micrographs of the three-switch 3R and the receiver board.

as can be seen in Fig. 15(b). The voltage formed by a series

of diodes with the diode-connected
of Fig. 15(a) acts as
a reference voltage, and
with an edge-enhancement filter
(EEF) stimulates
to charge
. On the other hand,
limits
by forming a current path to five series diodes.
C. Digital Feedback
For only the efficiency, a fully turned on-duty state will be the
best. However, in such way, voltage regulation is impossible. As
a result, around 80% of the duty will be the point of compromise
for both the efficiency and the regulation, as shown in Fig. 11(b).
A digital feedback loop can ensure that the duty is located at
the optimum point by trimming the drain voltage of the Class-E
amplifier in Fig. 13. This feedback does not have to be fast. In
fact, this digital feedback has to be much slower than the main
feedback loop, as indicated by the dotted arrows. Hence, the
loops do not interfere with each other in the frequency domain.
The three-bit duty information for the digital feedback appears during every duty cycle. Then, 1000 samples of information are averaged in the MCU to operate the duty precisely. By
processing the average duty,
is controlled five times per
second.
V. FABRICATION AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULT
Both the one-switch 3R in Section II, and the proposed 3R
in Section III were fabricated in a 0.35 m BCD process. Because the proposed 3R is capable of superior performance than
the one-switch 3R, most of the figures in this Section V are from
the proposed three-switch 3R. Fig. 16 shows a chip micrograph
with the receiver board. The IC has three switches, M1, M2,
and M3; it also has a sync control block (TCON). On the PCB,
full-bridge rectifiers consisting of four diodes, capacitors: 20 F
and 10 F capacitors are used for the
and
, respectively, and several sliding switches are soldered; these switches
control the four-bit delay and the operation modes. The duty information pins can be connected, or not connected, to the MCU.
The experimental setting is shown in Fig. 17 with a transmitter
and a transmitting coil at the bottom, and the 3R board and receiving coil on top. The spatial freedom is measured with a grid
plate; the WPT works while the receiver coil moves within an
area of 7 2.5 cm .

Fig. 17. Experimental setting and measured spatial freedom of the 3R RWPT
system.

Fig. 18 shows the measured waveform of

and
the rectifier current for both the CCM and DCM with
values of 2.5 W and 0.5 W, respectively, at 6.78 MHz. In this
case, a class-E PA operates in the transmitter at a fixed
.
In the CCM,
is switched between 5 V and 10 V, while
is increased to 12.5 V in the DCM with a
value of
200 pF. The peak envelope from (a) and (b) shows slanted rising
and falling waveform. Meanwhile, the small fluctuations in the
envelope waveform are seems to be came from the resonant
tanks inherent characteristic.
The load regulation characteristic is measured, as shown in
Fig. 19.
deviation of 3.3% appeared during a change
in the load current from 70 mA to 700 mA. The load change
from 50 mA to 1.2 A is also experimented, as shown in Fig. 20,
with the variable
in our transmitter controlled by the
MCU using three-bit duty signals, as illustrated in Fig. 13. At
the points marked by the arrows at which switching occurs in
Fig. 21,
noise with ZCS is eliminated compared to
noise when
is disabled, as indicated by the dotted circles.
Related to efficiency,
from
and
and
from
and
in Fig. 13 are measured;
is the power
which flows from the rectifier output to the IC input, which is the
part of the 3R circuit. Using the measured values, the efficiency
of the individual IC is calculated, and the efficiency of the 3R
receiver board is estimated while subtracting the power loss due
to the external Schottky diodes, as shown in Fig. 22. Here, the
RMS voltage of
is higher than
. This

CHOI et al.: RESONANT REGULATING RECTIFIERS (3R) OPERATING FOR 6.78 MHz RESONANT WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER (RWPT)

Fig. 18. Measured waveform of

and

2999

in (a) the CCM and (b) the DCM.

Fig. 19. Measured waveform of

and
with a load transient
between 70 mA and 700 mA is shown. The duty change is highlighted in the
enlarged window.

Fig. 21. With or without ZCS, the waveforms of the

vary drastically.

Fig. 20. The proposed 3R operates while the transmitter is controlled using
and
with a
duty information. The Measured waveform of
variable load between 50 mA and 1.2 A is displayed.

means that a diode drop voltage

occupy less portion when
the voltage of
is high, and also means that
is less than
. This fact is applied when the loss of diodes
is calculated.
The
level of when dividing the DCM and CCM is set
to 1 W and the efficiency is measured by varying
from
300 mW to 6 W when
MHz and
V.

Fig. 22. The efficiency plots for the individual IC (red dotted line) and the
overall 3R receiver board (black solid line).

3000

IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 48, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2013

TABLE II
COMPARISON CHART FOR 3R SYSTEMS WITH RECENTLY REPORTED RWPT SYSTEMS

When
is around 0 to 60 mW, the efficiency is below 10%.
Since the focus of this research is on 5 W-level WPT, consideration on small leakage power is not carefully taken into. The efficiency reaches 85% to 86% when 3.5 W
W, then
it slightly reduces as
is further increased. This is a natural result, because switches size is optimized for 5 W
.
However, curiously, the efficiency increases when
W. This is because of the unintentional pulse skipping phenomenon due to the discrete PWM control. It possibly benefits 3R
in extending the maximum
, but may worsen regulation
capability.
Table II shows the evaluated performance of the 3R, among
recently reported RWPTs fabricated in IC [2][6]. 3R has the
largest
and supports a 5 W wireless charger. It can regulate the output voltage, with and without the help of transmitter
circuit.

VI. CONCLUSION
A Resonant Wireless Power Transfer (RWPT) system with
a power transfer capability of more than 5 W and an independently regulating ability is introduced in this paper. For the proposed system, receiver circuits, termed 3R, are fabricated in
0.35 m BCD technology. Among the two, one that uses three
switches and a synchronizing technique achieves superior performance; the maximum
reaches 6 W and the peak efficiency of the receiver board is 86%. Impressively, these characteristics were used in the frequency of 6.78 MHz. In this
frequency, the parasitic effects degrade the performance much
more than when in several hundred kHz, where most of the

IPT systems usually operate. The switching operation with the

distinguished topology of the three-switch 3R solves numerous
problems, including the high
voltage from the inrushing
, the low
due to the break-down of the transistor, and
the low efficiency with a high RMS current despite the same
average current. Most importantly, this 3R does not require an
extra inductor, as it uses phasor-transformed inductance in the
resonant tanks, and does regulate the voltage, using a switching
mechanism.
REFERENCES
[1] Qi Specification, Version 1.1.2, Jun. 2013 [Online]. Available: http://
www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com/developers/specification.html
[2] Datasheet WiT-2000 M, 2013 [Online]. Available: http://www.
witricity.com/pdfs/WiT-2000M-developers-kit-for-mobile-datasheet-v14.pdf
[3] J. H. Choi et al., A resonant regulating rectifier (3R) operating at 6.78
MHz for a 6 W wireless charger with 86% efficiency, in IEEE ISSCC
Dig. Tech. Papers, 2013, pp. 6465.
[4] R. Shinoda et al., Voltage-boosting wireless power delivery system
-modulated sub-harmonic resonant
with fast load tracker by
switching, in IEEE ISSCC Dig. Tech. Papers, 2012, pp. 288290.
[5] K. Tomita et al., 1-W 3.316.3-V boosting wireless power transfer
circuits with vector summing power controller, IEEE J. Solid-State
Circuits, vol. 47, no. 11, pp. 25762585, Nov. 2012.
[6] H. M. Lee and M. Ghovanloo, An adaptive reconfigurable active
voltage doubler/rectifier for extended-range inductive power transmission, IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II, vol. 59, no. 8, pp. 481485, Aug.
2012.
[7] G. B. Joung et al., Integral cycle mode control of the series resonant
converter, IEEE Trans. Power Electr., vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 8391, Jan.
1989.
[8] C. T. Rim and G. H. Cho, Phasor transformation and its application to
the DC/AC analyses of frequency phase-controlled series resonant converters (SRC), IEEE Trans. Power Electr., vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 201211,
Apr. 1990.

CHOI et al.: RESONANT REGULATING RECTIFIERS (3R) OPERATING FOR 6.78 MHz RESONANT WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER (RWPT)

Jun-Han Choi (S13) received the B.S. degree from

Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in 2006, and the
M.S. degree from the Korea Advanced Institute of
Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea,
in 2011, both in electrical engineering. Since 2011,
he has been working toward THE Ph.D. degree in
electrical engineering at KAIST, Daejeon.
From 2006 to 2008, he worked in the research
center of Samsung Thales, Gyeonggi-do, Korea,
where he is working on the development of IR cameras. His research interests are in the field of analog
circuit designs for power electronics and application processor applications,
including IC-based wireless power transfer systems, envelope modulators for
envelop tracking power amplifiers, very high frequency switch-mode buck
converters, multiphase buck converters and voltage-tolerant power converters.

Sung-Ku Yeo received the B.S., M.S., and

Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea, in 2003, 2005, and 2009,
respectively.
In 2009, he joined Samsung Electronics, Suwon,
Korea, where his research interests are wireless
power transfer system.

Seho Park received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in photonics from the Materials Science Department, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea, in 1995, 1997, and 2002, respectively.
In 2001, he joined Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.,
Suwon, Korea, and was involved in the optical
fiber amplifier, Gbit multimode fiber and wide-band
NZDSF project in photonics business. Since 2007, he
has lead the chip embedded PCB, nano-ink patterned
flexible PCB and the wireless power transfer project
in DMC R&D center and mobile communications
business. In 2011, he became a Principal Engineer and was honored with the
Samsung Electronics annual award of the best patent. He holds more than 43
patents in the wireless power transfer technology.

3001

Jeong-Seok Lee (M13) received the M.S. and Ph.D.

degrees in solid-state physics from the Department of
Physics, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in
1993 and 1997, respectively.
In 1997, he joined Samsung Advanced Institute
Technology. In 2002, he has researched many topics
related to wireless devices in Samsung Electronics
Co. Ltd., Suwon, Korea, for example, haptics, optical
wireless pen, wireless charger systems, and more.

Gyu-Hyeong Cho (S76M80SM11) received

the B.S. degree from Hanyang University, Korea,
and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, all in electrical
engineering, from the Korea Advanced Institute of
Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea,
in 1975, 1977, and 1981, respectively.
During 19821983, he was with the Westinghouse
R&D Center in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. In 1984, he
joined the Department of Electrical Engineering,
KAIST, where he has been a full Professor since
1991. His early research was in the area of power
electronics until the late 1990s and worked on soft switching converters and
high power converters. Later, he shifted to analog integrated circuit design,
and now he is interested in several areas including power management ICs,
Class-D amplifiers, touch sensors and drivers for AMOLED and LCD flat panel
displays, biosensors and wireless power transfer systems. He has authored one
book on advanced electronic circuits and authored or coauthored over 200
technical papers and 80 patents.
Dr. Cho received the Outstanding Teaching Award from KAIST. He served
as a member of the ISSCC international technical program committee, and is
now an associate editor of IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS. At the
ISSCC 60th Anniversary in 2013, he received the ISSCC Author Recognition
Award as one of the top 16 contributors of the conference.