CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

One of the major and important aspects of life is availability of enough and ongoing power

supply in the community, be it an industry or society. Apart from the power itself as an

important aspect to be considered in our daily life, there comes an issue of how the power

is supposed to be supplied in some cases. In recent years, one of the vital power transfer

is wireless power transfer where by power can be transmitted from the source through

the transmitter to the receiver without the actual usage of wires.

It has been about 200 hundred years since the first study on wireless power

transfer was initiated by the famous scientist in the field of electricity known as Nikola

Tesla. Before Tesla demonstrated his first wireless power transfer in the years 1891 to

1894 by means of electrostatic induction using a high-tension induction coil at the

American Institute of Electrical Engineers at Columbia College, the wireless power transfer

study was really backed by the discovery of the fact that electricity can be produced from

the magnetic field and vice versa. This was discovered around years 1826 to 1831 by the

two famous scientist in electricity Andre-Marie Ampere who discovered that electricity can

produce magnetic field hence Ampere-circuital law and Michael Faraday nicknamed as the

father of elasticity, developed faraday’s law of induction in which he describes that

electromagnetic force can be induced in a conductor by varying magnetic flux around it

(Tianjia Sun, Xiang Xie, & Zhihua Wang, 2013).

In their study, they explained that after several years of development of wireless

power transfer since the time of Tesla and others, in year 1904 to 1907 at the St. Louis

World’s Fair, a prize was offered for a successful project to drive a 0.1 horse power airship

motor by energy transmitted wirelessly at a distance of at least 30 meters. Along this, was

the development of the first wireless telecommunication systems and wireless power

transmission developed as well. The developed went on some years until year 1926 to

1968 in which the first solar power satellite was built adapting the wireless power transfer.

This solar power satellite used the microwave power transmission after the article on the

Yagi antenna was published by Hidetsugu Yagi.

They explained that the first passive RFID system in the world was demonstrated

at Los- Alamos National Lab in the year 1973. This as well showed the development of the

wireless power transfer. The RFID tags could be powered wirelessly over a few feet

through electrodynamic induction. This era went until year 1998. From the year 1998

nothing really changed in the wireless power transfer technology as specific aspects but

only in general and minor development until it reaches around early 2000.

2
 In the year 2007 there was a use of strongly magnetic resonance especially by the

WiTricity research group under MIT. Strongly magnetic resonance system wirelessly

powered a 60 W bulb with maximum of 40 % power efficiency at an approximate distance

of 2 meters. The later study by Intel was able to apply the concept of electrodynamic

induction to wirelessly power a just close distanced light bulb with the efficiency improved

to 75% which was far better than that of WiTricity research group under MIT using the

strongly magnetic resonance. In the year 2010, Haier managed to show LCD TV at CES

2010 through researched Wireless Home Digital Interface. This era went on until year

2013 as no many changes until then. The wireless power transfer has been a topic of

many researches until this time.

In this research there will be modeling of an optimized and output power improved

inductive coupling wireless power transfer. R. C. Bansal Dr. defined optimization is a

mathematical model where main objective is to minimize undesirable things (e.g. cost,

energy loss, errors, etc.) or maximize desirable things (e.g. profit, quality, efficiency, etc.),

subject to some constraints, so in this project the output power is to be maximized and to

minimize the losses (R. C. Bansal Dr. 2005)

The thesis will firstly optimize the output power through the input frequency from

the graph of power output against frequency which will be obtained. The thesis will also

discuss ways to improve the output power and suggest the best model and regulating the

voltage for lower voltage devices of 5v output voltages.

3
1.2 Problem statement

In many recent ongoing researches on wireless power transfer and wireless energy

harvesting, have come to the attention that most of the researches gave much attention

on the factors affecting the output power like distance, frequency and others. However it

is forgotten that the inductive coupling wireless power transfer is characterized with the

great deal of power losses due to fringing flux and the skin effect in inductive coupling

wireless power transfer (Ali Abdolkhani 2016)

Ali Abdolkhani explained that the skin effect is the restriction of the flow of

alternating current to the surface of a conductor. Which is caused by the alternating

magnetic field that the current itself generates within the conductor. The current flowing

in the conductor generates a magnetic field around it. This field in turn creates circulating

currents in the wire in opposite direction to the main current flow in the center of the

conductor and add to the main current closer to the surface of the wire and eventually an

increase in the effective resistance of the conductor hence power losses.

Wireless power harvesting (WPH) and wireless power transfer (WPT) have been

interesting topics for researchers for the purposes of inventions in medical field. Imagine

the issue of medical microsystems where by some people with internal organs failure like

heart will be placed with circuits to assist the heart to function. Since the circuit needs

power to work, now imagine the wires and a battery to be placed inside someone’s body

or someone’s heart and once the battery runs out of power it has to be replaced and yet

the output power is low due to losses. All these explains the importance of strong

researches and innovations on wireless power optimization and improvement.

4
1.3 Objectives of the project

The aim of this research work is to analyze the output power of inductive coupled wireless

power transfer and suggesting the possible ways to optimize and improve the output

power. Hence this aim created the following main objectives:

a) To examine frequency response of the inductive coupled wireless power transfer.

b) To optimize and improve the output power of the inductive coupled wireless power

transfer.

c) To model the optimized and improved inductive coupled wireless power transfer

for low voltage devices

1.4 Scope of the project

This research focused much on discussion on the inductive coupled wireless power transfer

and the ways to optimize and improve its output power. So this project will investigate

how to optimize the output power from the frequency response by selecting the frequency

with the highest power output. Nevertheless, this project will suggest the maximum ways

to optimize output power of inductive wireless power transfer. This analysis could be

achieved in three major ways.

The first way could be using the physical equipment in the laboratory to build a

circuit for the inductive coupled power transfer method and obtaining the data and analyze

them graphically and using the data to optimize and improve the output. Another method

is using circuit built computer software like Pspice, proteous professional, multism and

other software. The circuit may then be simulated and see the required output graph. The

third way to do this type of research is through analytical analysis in which formulas

5
derived from the theories or modelled circuit block diagrams and the formula is then

modelled in the Matlab to give out the graphical relation of the required variables and

make use of the data.

This research will focus on the second and partially third type of the research type

as explained above. So there will be inductive coupled power transfer simulation circuit

and investigating the ways to optimize and improve the output power.

1.5 Organization of the project

In order to reach the desired discussion and results on this research work on inductive

wireless power transfer, the work is divided into some chapters containing different

contents in a well-planned manner. This research work consists of five main chapters.

Chapter 1 is introduction which gives the general idea of the topic and what’s

really in this research work. This chapter consists of background of the study, problem

statement, objectives of the work, scope of the research. Chapter 2 is literature review

which explain all the engineering and scientific knowledge and ideas incorporated in the

project. The chapter consist of overview, definitions and types of wireless power transfer

like inductive and RF WPT and their applications. Chapter 3 explains the actual

methodology applied in tackling the project to reach the desired results. Chapter 4 explains

the results and analysis of the results obtained. And finally chapter 5 is conclusion and

future work, it concludes and suggests the future work of the obtained results.