Analysis and Design of Capacitive Power Transfer Systems Based on Induced Voltage Source Model

Capacitive power transfer is a promising mid-range wireless charging technique. The existing induced current source model suffers from the coupling variation issue, which causes troubles in resonance design and compensation development. This article explores an induced voltage source model for the capacitive coupler. Using this model, the six coupling-dependent capacitors between each pair of plates are equivalently represented by the self-capacitors and induced voltage sources. The self-capacitance is verified to be coupling independent. Based on this model, the power transfer capability, the efficiency, and the influence of adding external shunt capacitors are easily analyzed. This model is very helpful in investigating the existing topology and developing new compensations, such as the CLL-L compensation. Finally, a capacitive coupler is built to verify the model, based on which a CLL-L compensation is implemented for constant output voltage application. The achieved system peak efficiency is 88%.