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Wireless power transfer (WPT) is the transmission of electrical power without wires
and is based on technologies using time-varying electric, magnetic, or electromag-
netic fields.
Related terms:
22.1 Introduction
Wireless power transfer (WPT), in its general term, has been around us for decades
in applications such as telemetry, satellite communications, and radio frequency
identification (RFID) tags. Most of these applications transfer low amounts of power,
in the range of microwatts to milliwatts, for data transfer. For higher-power ap-
plications, from few watts to several kilowatts, over moderate distances, the WPT
has recently been the focus of the industrial developments. The most common
method of high power WPT is through inductive coupling that was invented by
Nikola Tesla more than a century ago. The recent developments in semiconductor
industry for high frequency and high-power applications have paved the path for
high-power inductive WPT improvements. Inductive WPT offers several benefits
over the wired connection and is applied in numerous applications such as wearable
electronics, health care, and automotive industry. This chapter starts by reviewing
various methods of WPT, followed by the design and analysis of inductive WPT.
The overall inductive WPT is studied step by step and component by component;
therefore, it is recommended to refer to the references for detailed analysis and
information.
Abstract
Wireless power transfer (WPT) is one of the hottest topics being actively studied, and
it is being widely commercialized. In particular, there has been a rapid expansion
of WPT in mobile phone chargers, stationary charging electric vehicles (EVs), and
dynamic charging EVs, also called road-powered EVs (RPEVs). It is expected that
WPT industry will grow persistently in the coming decades.
In this chapter, the concepts and practical applications of WPT to EVs are introduced.
Inductive power transfer (IPT) for stationary and dynamic charging EVs is explained
in detail. Design examples with experimental verifications are provided to help
beginners of IPT to develop their own IPT products for EVs.
Abstract
Wireless power transfer (WPT) systems allow power to be transferred from one
electrical network to another without the need for wires or exposed contacts. For
a large number of diverse applications, this feature is highly advantageous, and in
certain cases has enabled new applications to be realized. Further, WPT is poised to
play a vital role in the worldwide drive to electrify transportation systems and, thus,
become ubiquitous throughout technologically advanced future societies. Therefore,
knowledge in the area of WPT is increasingly important for the modern power
electronics engineer. In this chapter, various WPT techniques are described, before
a focus is developed on inductive power transfer, IPT, systems. Fundamental and
essential knowledge related to the design of IPT circuits and control methods is then
presented.
The noncapacitive WPT couplings, include the inductive, radio frequency (RF), and
ultrasound couplings. Of those, the inductive coupling is characterized by high
efficiency and power transfer capability and is therefore superior to the other two
(Moutopoulou et al., 2015), see Table 1. Also, according to Sun et al. (2013), inductive
coupling is considered to be the best choice for biomedical applications.
Options
Parameters Inductive Coupling [11] RF [6] [13] Ultrasound [14] [12]
[12]
Human safety Depends on energy Yes Yes
transferred
Efficiency 73% 48% 21%–35%
Max power Up to 10 W < 1 W 100 mW
Frequencies 1 kHz–100 MHz 30 kHz–300 GHz 10 kHz–10 MHz
For these applications, directivity, system stability, reliability, and efficiency en-
hancement through the wireless transfer coil design enhancement and operational
tunings are required (Kim et al., 2014). Other important parameters include human
safety due to a rise in tissue temperature and miniaturization of the relevant elec-
tronics (Moutopoulou et al., 2015).
Modeling techniques used in the analysis of WPT systems, with specific emphasis
on the approximations that restrict their applicability, aiming at a general modeling
technique is given in Moorey et al. (2014). Research in the area of implantable
high-power neuroprosthetic devices such as visual prostheses and BCIs focuses
on transcutaneous inductive power links formed between a pair of printed spiral
coils (PSCs), batch-fabricated using micromachining technology. Optimizing the
power efficiency of the wireless link is imperative to minimize the size of the
external energy source, heating dissipation in the tissue, and interference with other
devices. The theoretical foundation of optimal power transmission efficiency
in an inductive link, combined with semiempirical models resulted in two design
examples at 1 and 5 MHz, achieving power transmission efficiencies of 41.2%
and 85.8%, respectively, at 10-mm spacing (Jow and Ghovanloo, 2007). A method of
how to characterize and optimize rectangular coils used in inductive links for general
applications is described in Yong-Xi et al. (2011).
10.1 Introduction
Radio frequency (RF) transmission enabled wireless power transfer (WPT) is a
cost-effective solution to power energy-constrained wireless networks (e.g., sensor
networks), where dedicated energy transmitters are deployed to broadcast RF signals
to charge low-power electric devices (e.g., sensors and RF identification (RFID) tags).
Unlike other commonly used energy harvesting sources such as solar and wind
that are intermittent and unreliable, RF-based WPT is able to provide continuous
and controllable power supply, and thus is applicable to more energy-demanding
applications [1]. On the other hand, RF signals have been widely used in wireless
communications as the carrier for wireless information transfer (WIT) for several
decades. Traditionally, WPT and WIT have been investigated as two separate lines of
research. As they are both enabled by RF signals transmission, a practical question
thus arises that whether we can utilize RF signals more efficiently for both WPT and
WIT at the same time. This question has been recently addressed with the invention
and investigation of a new technique called simultaneous wireless information and
power transfer (SWIPT), which has attracted rapidly increasing attention in research.
SWIPT successfully unified the research in WIT and WPT, and opened an exciting
new direction for their joint investigation.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 10.2 introduces a multi-
user multiple-input single-output (MISO) broadcast channel model for SWIPT with
separate or co-located IR and ER receivers, and presents the optimal beamforming
design in each case. In particular, for the case of separate IRs and ERs, we also
consider the communication security problem in SWIPT where ERs may eavesdrop
the signals for IRs, and present the beamforming solution to overcome this problem
from a physical-layer perspective. Section 10.3 extends the discussions to other
SWIPT system setups. Finally, Section 10.4 concludes this paper.
Fig. 11.10 shows a numerical model of 6.8 MHz wireless power transfer system with
an anatomical human body model for EMI evaluation. The human body is irradiated
by the single-sided wireless power transfer system operating at 6.8 MHz. Here we
regard the single-sided wireless power transfer system as the transmitter, and it
consists of a single-turn drive loop and a high-Q transmit coil. The single-turn drive
loop has an outer diameter of 305 mm, while the transmit coil has a spiral shape with
6.1 turns, an outer diameter of 580 mm, and a pitch of 10 mm. The drive loop and
transmit coil are set with either horizontal or vertical arrangement, and the nearest
distance between the transmit coil and human body surface is denoted as d.
Figure 11.10. Numerical wireless power transfer system at 6.8 MHz near a human
body.(A) Horizontal placement of drive loop and transmit coil. (B) Vertical placement
of drive loop and transmit coil. (C) Structure of drive loop and transmit coil.
In the first step, with the numerical model in Fig. 11.10, the common-mode voltage
was calculated between the ground plane and human body by using full-wave FDTD
simulation. The drive loop was fed with a voltage source with an inner resistance
of 50 Ω and a series capacitance of 450 pF for matching. Based on our findings, it
was found that the electric field distributes mainly outside the human body, whereas
quite weak inside the human body. On the other hand, the vertical placement of the
transmit coil exhibits a wider EM distribution range along the human body com-
pared with that of horizontal placement. This also makes a larger common-mode
voltage than that of horizontal placement. The corresponding results for 1 transmit
coil current in the 6.8 MHz wireless power transfer system are tabulated in Table
11.1. It can be seen that in either the case of d=1 or 10 cm, the common-mode
voltage increases when changing the placement of drive loop and transmit coil from
horizontal plane to vertical plane. In addition, if shortening the nearest distance
between the transmit coil and human body d from 10 to 1 cm, the common-mode
voltage may increase by approximately 10%–30%.
Table 11.1. Common-mode voltage (V) induced by 6.8 MHz wireless power transfer
system with 1 transmit coil current.
By using the derived common-mode voltage given in Table 11.1, we then further
calculated differential-mode interference using Eq. (11.1) and SPICE simulation
with reference to Fig. 11.6 for the cases of contact resistance (, ) and coupling
capacitance (, ), respectively. With regard to the influence of contact impedance
of the sensing electrodes, an imbalance from 10% to 50% was taken into con-
sideration to investigate the differential-mode interference voltage . Moreover, in
order to verify the validity of the calculated interference voltage, we succeeded in
fabricating a common-mode equivalent circuit and experimentally measured the
differential-mode voltage for different imbalance cases of contact resistance of and
. The comparison result of with respect to between the SPICE simulation and
experimental measurement is shown in Fig. 11.11, in which solid lines represent
SPICE-simulated results, and symbols represent measured ones. It can be seen that
the simulated interference voltages along with the average contact resistance are
consistent with the measured ones with reasonable accuracy, suggesting the validity
of the employed two-step approach and the simulated results. In addition, it was also
found that the differential-mode interference voltage is mainly caused by contact
imbalance of the sensing electrodes, because for each case of imbalance, seems
flat and not sensitive to the contact resistance itself. This means that making the
contact impedance as small as possible may be the most effective method to reduce
the common-mode produced interference voltage for a wearable device. Mean-
while, Table 11.2 summarizes the derived differential-mode interference voltage for
1 transmit coil current under different considered cases. Overall, the produced
differential-mode voltage for the case of contact resistance is larger than that for the
case of coupling capacitance, and the vertical placement of the drive and transmit
coil also results in a larger interference voltage value than horizontal placement.
Moreover, with the increasing distance of the transmit coil from human body, the
voltage magnitudes become small obviously. For 1 transmit coil current, even at
a distance of 10 cm from human body, the differential-mode interference voltage
may achieve more than 0.6 V for contact resistance case, and 0.1 V for coupling
capacitance case, with an imbalance of 50%.
Improvements could also be made to both the transmitter and receiver circuitry
to account for undesired f uctuations in the transmitted power levels, which must
be kept in check in order to maintain a constant current delivered to the drug
pump. Common circumstances when the power drops lower than desired include
the transmitter and receiver coils moving away from the optimal distance (e.g. 1 cm)
or when misalignment in the angle between the coils takes place. To remedy this,
the transmitter circuitry can be designed so that it is able to sense reflected power off t
he receiver in a wireless closed loop fashion and adjust the amount of power sent
from the transmitter circuitry.
There are a variety of methods on how to approach controlling the amount of drug
delivered by the drug pump if given minimal limitations in the areas of power,
size, and cost. For example, in the receiver, a microcontroller could be added to the
design and programmed with an implantable radio to change the desired current
levels (e.g. 8–10–12 mA), thus changing the rate of drug dosage. This receiver
design is confined by size, due to the desire for the device to be implantable, and
cost. Therefore, tradeoffs must be accounted for and analyzed. The challenges faced
with employing a pre-packaged microcontroller and a separate implantable radio
include power consumption, complexity, size, cost, and programming effort. Ideally,
a microcontroller, inductive powering circuitry, and a low power implant-able radio
designed on a single custom integrated circuit would be the end-all solution. A
different approach that allows for a much simpler, low power system design is to
keep the current delivered to the drug pump constant, and to change the duty cycle
of the transmitted primary signal to alter the rate of flow of drug dosage.
The future goal for the wireless powering and bi-directional data transfer circuitry
is to take the re-design and characterize the transmitter and receiver design for the
MEMS drug pump based on the aforementioned requirements, and then to create
a custom integrated circuit chip in CMOS technology based on the finalized design.
The planned future design includes the wireless control circuitry, a microcontroller,
and a custom implanted medical band radio on the same die.
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(21.1)
(21.2)
It is desirable to keep SAR levels below the standard safety limits during the operation
of TETS. Therefore, the major safety consideration in applying TETS technology
to power a VAD is tissue heating due to electric field absorption. Finite element
simulations with human body models can be conducted to estimate SAR for TETS
technology. Simulations need to be followed by in vitro experiments, and then in
vivo experiments before moving into clinical trials. For example, Fig. 21.12 shows an
FEA simulation carried out using a human body model.
Reprinted with permission from Ho JS, Poon AS. Energy transfer for implantable
electronics in the electromagnetic midfield. Prog Electromagn Res 2014;148:151–8.
Far-field1 radio frequency energy harvesting (RFEH) is suitable for long-range wire-
less power transfer, i.e., cm range for high-frequency on-chip antennas to several
meter range for off-chip antennas. This makes RFEH suitable for battery-less sensors
in a WSN remotely powered by a hub (i.e., RF source). RFEH suits many applications,
such as smart house, smart grid, Internet of things (IoT), and wireless body area
networks (WBAN). Especially in the last few years, the WBAN application is gaining
importance due to the growing importance of health care in society as health
needs to be continuously monitored to identify chronic diseases or prevent illness.
Examples of WBANs are a sensor array for monitoring ExG signals [1–2] and a
disposable battery-less band-aid sensor [3].
Wireless chargers
The most ideal situation for charging EV batteries is to charge the vehicle while it is
cruising on the road, the so-called move-and-charge. Thus, there is no need for an
EV driver to find a charging station, park the vehicle and then spend time recharging
the batteries. The power transmitter is placed underneath the surface of a section
of roadway, called the charging zone, and the EV wirelessly picks up the power for
battery charging.