Research on a Multiple-Receiver Inductively Coupled Power Transfer System for Mooring Buoy Applications

Inductively coupled power transfer (ICPT) systems, which are superior to batteries due to their real-time power supplycapacity have been used in mooring buoys for the purpose of long-term measurements. A multiple-receiver ICPT system for mooring buoys, which contains a mooring cable for transmitting power, is proposed in this paper to obtain the corresponding profile parameters. Series compensation is applied to all three sections, including the transmitter, the mooring cable and multiple receivers. The voltage of an underwater system with arbitrary load can be stabilized. On that basis, high efficiency can be obtained. By adopting Wolfram Mathematica a detailed analysis of both double-receiver and multiple-receiver ICPT systems for mooring buoys is presented. Finally, a prototype ICPT system with three receivers mounted on a 30 m mooring cable was built to verify the theoretical analysis. Experimental results show that the power transfer efficiency exceeds 45%. Both theoretical analysis and experiments indicate that this system is appropriate for measuring ocean profile parameters.