Automatic Receiver Tracking and Power Channeling for Multi-Transmitter Wireless Power Transfer

Free positioning of receivers is one of the key requirements for many wireless power transfer (WPT) applications, required from the end-user point of view. However, realization of stable and effective wireless power transfer for freely positioned receivers is technically challenging task because of the requirement of complex control and tuning. In this paper, we propose a concept of automatic receiver tracking and power channeling for multi-transmitter WPT systems using uncoupled transmitter and uncoupled repeaters. Each transmitter-repeater pair forms an independent power transfer channel providing an effective link for the power flow from the transmitter to the receiver. The proposed WPT system is capable of maintaining stable output power with constant high efficiency regardless of the receiver position and without having any active control or tuning. The proposed concept is numerically and experimentally verified by using a four-transmitter WPT system in form of a linear array. The experimental results show that the efficiency of the proposed WPT system can reach 94.5\% with a variation less than 2\% against the receiver position.