Wireless Power Transfer System Design for Low-Rate In-Cabin Applications

Radio-frequency (RF) wireless power transfer (WPT) is an emerging technology to replace conventional wired or battery-powered systems. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of the RF wireless powering of sensors in wireless avionics intra-communications (WAIC) applications. The main focus is on remote powering WAIC low date rate sensors located Inside the aircraft (LI sensors). One important question is how to deploy WPT transmitters inside aircraft given the fact that the WPT transmitters can only be placed in certain positions. Our objective is to find the least number of WPT transmitters and corresponding positions for them to provide the required energy for each sensor and to satisfy certain levels of duty cycles. We convert the problem into an integer linear programming (ILP) and solve it with known ILP tools. Our simulations illustrate the feasibility of powering LI sensors with 22 transmitters for duty cycles less than 1% while keeping the human radiation exposure below the recommended reference value of 4.57 W/m
²
.