A Comparative Study of Power Supply Architectures in Wireless EV Charging Systems

This paper examines two of the primary power supply architectures being predominantly used for wireless electric vehicle (EV) charging, namely the series LC (SLC) resonant and the hybrid series-parallel (LCL) resonant full-bridge inverter topologies. The study of both of these topologies is presented in the context of designing a 3-kW primary-side controlled stationary wireless EV charger with nominal operating parameters of 30-kHz center frequency, a range of coupling in the neighborhood of 0.18-0.26, and a parallel secondary pick-up with partial series coil compensation. A comparison of both architectures is made in terms of their design methodology, physical size, cost, complexity, and efficiency. It is found that the SLC architecture is 2.45% less costly than the LCL topology. On the other hand, it is observed that the LCL architecture achieves almost 10% higher peak efficiency at rated load and minimum coupling. The study also showed that the SLC topology suffers from poor light load efficiency, while the LCL topology maintains very high efficiency over its full range of coupling and loading. The study also revealed that the capacitor voltage stress is significantly higher in the SLC topology. Finally, it is also shown that the control complexity of the SLC architecture is higher than that of the LCL architecture because of its sensitivity to changes in the reflected secondary impedance, which result in loss of constant current source and ZVS operation unless a suitable combination of parameters are modulated by the closed-loop controller.