Widening the Operating Range of a Wireless Charging System Using Tapped Transmitter Winding and Bifrequency Pulse Train Control

In this article, a subharmonics switching technique named bifrequency pulse train (BF-PT) control for wireless battery charging system with tapped transmitter (Tx) winding is proposed to regulate the output power against the variation of load and coupling coefficient. The tapped Tx winding is spilt into two subwindings: subwinding I is connected to the inverter while subwinding II is in open circuit. The charging current and charging voltage can be acquired by measuring the induced current of subwinding I and the induced voltage of subwinding II, respectively, without dual-side communication. BF-PT control, which contains high- and low-frequency pulse trains, can achieve zero voltage switching over a wide operating range. The high- and low-frequency pulse trains are uniformly distributed to suppress the winding current oscillation and to minimize the output voltage ripple. When the coupling becomes weaker and/or light-load conditions, the switches are operated at the subharmonics frequency to further reduce the average switching frequency of the system. To verify the validity of the proposed method, a wireless charging system with 72 V/3 A output is fabricated. The experimental results confirmed that the proposed method is able to maintain constant current and constant voltage output regardless of the load and coupling variations.