Alignment- and metallic-obstacle-insensitive contactless power transmission system utilizing surface-guided mode

Abstract

A key limitation inherent in wireless power transmission (WPT) systems using coils is a high sensitivity to the alignment between the transmitting and receiving coils. Moreover, the physical separation of the transmitting and receiving coils or any metallic barrier between them can notably reduce the efficiency. To overcome these limitations, a practical WPT system that is insensitive to the alignment between coils and metallic obstacles is proposed. It uses a printed circuit board-type antenna fabricated by reducing the structure of an antenna used in previous research and is designed to resonate at the target frequency through impedance matching. The proposed system uses surface-guided-mode resonance at the metal-air interface and transmits uniform power within 1.3 m. In addition, the proposed system satisfies the electromagnetic field international standard that is the electric field and magnetic field reference values are 152.5 V/m and 0.4 A/m, respectively at 4 MHz.