Wireless power and data transfer system for smart bridge sensors

This paper proposes a novel system for smart bridge sensors that enables power and information data to be transferred simultaneously. For power transfer, the proposed system uses a half-bridge converter including a series-series compensator, and it provides power to the sensors through the concrete structure. For data transmission, the proposed system detects physical information of the smart bridge by sensing the voltage variation of the resonant capacitor in the transmitter. The proposed system thereby can reduce management cost of the smart bridge by using a wireless power transfer system for rechargeable batteries and eliminating the communication module for data transmission. A prototype system is validated by experiments. The efficiency is 43.6% with a distance of 300 mm and data transmission is properly conducted with a 1500bps data rate.