Single-Sided Near-Field Wireless Power Transfer by A Three-Dimensional Coil Array

Analysis on Influences of Intra-Couplings in a MISO Magnetic Beamforming Wireless Power Transfer System

Magnetic beamforming techniques can enhance the power transfer efficiency using focused magnetic fields by the multiple transmitters to the receivers. However, the intra-couplings that cause power leakage and phase distortion among the arrayed coils inevitably occur due to the deployment of coils having strong couplings between each other. Here, we analyze the adverse influences of intra-couplings and present the advantages of magnetically independent transmitters for multiple-inputs and single-output (MISO) WPT. The independent coil array can achieve focused magnetic fields by simply adjusting the amplitude of the transmitter voltage source without phase adjustment. The system also can eliminate the reactive power with the independent coil array to efficiently use the supplying power from the source. The analytical studies are verified by numerical and circuit simulation and experiments. Our analysis can be generalized to the MISO-WPT with an arbitrary number of transmitters. It can provide insight into designing and implementing the MISO-WPT applying magnetic beamforming.

Hybrid Coils-Based Wireless Power Transfer for Intelligent Sensors

Most wearable intelligent biomedical sensors are battery-powered. The batteries are large and relatively heavy, adding to the volume of wearable sensors, especially when implanted. In addition, the batteries have limited capacity, requiring periodic charging, as well as a limited life, requiring potentially invasive replacement. This paper aims to design and implement a prototype energy harvesting technique based on wireless power transfer/magnetic resonator coupling (WPT/MRC) to overcome the battery power problem by supplying adequate power for a heart rate sensor. We optimized transfer power and efficiency at different distances between transmitter and receiver coils. The proposed MRC consists of three units: power, measurement, and monitoring. The power unit included transmitter and receiver coils. The measurement unit consisted of an Arduino Nano microcontroller, a heart rate sensor, and used the nRF24L01 wireless protocol. The experimental monitoring unit was supported by a laptop to monitor the heart rate measurement in real-time. Three coil topologies: spiral–spiral, spider–spider, and spiral–spider were implemented for testing. These topologies were examined to explore which would be the best for the application by providing the highest transfer power and efficiency. The spiral–spider topology achieved the highest transfer power and efficiency with 10 W at 87%, respectively over a 5 cm air gap between transmitter and receiver coils when a 200 Ω resistive load was considered. Whereas, the spider–spider topology accomplished 7 W and 93% transfer power and efficiency at the same airgap and resistive load. The proposed topologies were superior to previous studies in terms of transfer power, efficiency and distance.