A Cost-Effective Segmented Dynamic Wireless Charging System With Stable Efficiency and Output Power

This article presents a cost-effective dynamic wireless power transfer (DWPT) system for efficient and stable output power charging of autonomous moving equipment. The proposed system is realized based on a low-cost segmented configuration and a flexible operating strategy. Specifically, the configuration is a combination of a dynamic
T
-series/series topology and extended transmitter (Tx) coils. The topology eliminates the cross-coupling impact of adjacent Tx coils and tunes the dynamic circuits at resonance. It makes the switching circuits equivalent to a unified analytical model for simplified control, which reduces the cost of inverter, decoupling, compensation, and position detection in the DWPT. The extended Tx coil with a simplified structure, which is obtained from winding coupling characteristics and a finite-element analysis based algorithm, is proposed to improve the moving misalignment tolerance, thereby reducing the number of Tx segments. An operating principle with three modes behind the proposed strategy is designed to fully utilize the efficient coupling area of individual Tx segment and improve the efficiency in the transition region from one segment to the other one. The operating parameters including the transition and compensation are obtained based on the topology and its operating principles. Position detection and power regulation methods are developed and embedded in the system control to configure/coordinate the segmented coils as the strategy and mitigate power fluctuation in the transition region. The performance and effectiveness of the proposed cost-effective DWPT system are evaluated based on experimental results on a scaled-down prototype.