Design and implement an adaptive position adjustment coupler for coil-misaligned inductive contactless power transfer system

Efficiency and power of inductive contactless power transfer (ICPT) system are influenced by the variation of mutual inductance, and the mutual inductance will decrease if the position between transmitter coil and receiver coil is misaligned. In order to solve this problem, an adaptive position adjustment (APA) coupler is proposed to improve the performance of ICPT system under coil-misaligned conditions. The coupler comprises three separate power supply areas, and each area consists of six small hexagonal coils. Through detecting the position of receiving coil automatically, the optimal area of transmitter coil is adaptive selected, that will enhance the degree of coupling between the coils. The experimental results show that this introduced APA-Coupler can enhance the transfer efficiency and power for coil-misaligned ICPT system.