Misalignment Sensitivity of Strongly Coupled Wireless Power Transfer Systems

• Published in: IEEE transactions on power electronics Vol. 32; no. 7; pp. 5509 - 5519
• Main Authors: Daerhan Liu, Hao Hu, Georgakopoulos, Stavros V.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-07-2017; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Coils; Efficiency; Hybrid systems; Magnetic resonance; Misalignment; Receivers; Resonant frequency; Sensitivity; strongly coupled magnetic resonance (SCMR); Three dimensional models; Transmitters; wireless power transfer (WPT); Wireless power transmission
• ISSN: 0885-8993; 1941-0107
• DOI: 10.1109/TPEL.2016.2605698

A traditional strongly coupled magnetic resonance (SCMR) system is highly sensitive to the alignment between the transmitter and receiver elements, which is an issue that has limited their applicability in practical wireless power transfer systems. This paper proposes, for the first time, a novel set of SCMR-based topologies that are less sensitive to misalignment while providing large wireless powering efficiencies. Specifically, instead of using planar coils for the transmitter and the receiver, we connect two orthogonal coils together into a 3-D model to provide misalignment insensitivity. Three SCMR systems (standard SCMR, conformal SCMR, and hybrid SCMR systems) are studied and compared to the proposed 3-D SCMR system in terms of angular azimuth, angular elevation, and lateral misalignment. Also, the ranges of these SCMR systems are compared. It is shown that the proposed misalignment system achieves above 40% efficiency for the entire range of 360° of angular misalignment. Also, our results show that the proposed misalignment system provides longer range.