Wireless Energy Harvesting System Through Metal for Aerospace Sensor

We present the development of a contactless energy harvesting system to transfer power through metal that could be potentially used for aerospace applications. By co-designing a switching power amplifier, high performance inductive coils and rectifier with load, the inductive power transfer system is proposed. Practical issues such as coil winding to maximize power transfer efficiency, effective implementation of ferrite, and the optimal design of impedance transformation network are considered. Power measurement results demonstrate that the harvester system achieves a measured power efficiency of ~ 3.4 %. The measured maximum output power is more than 500 mW and Iinearly increases with input current. The proposed inductive coupling type of harvesting system overcomes major limitations of conventional vibration-type of energy conversion such as lower power, short life cycle, unreliable problems in extremely harsh aeronautics environment.