A Reticulated Planar Transmitter Using a Three-Dimensional Rotating Magnetic Field for Free-Positioning Omnidirectional Wireless Power Transfer

This article proposes a free-positioning omnidirectional wireless power transfer (WPT) system with a reticulated planar transmitter, which enables multiple receivers to be powered simultaneously in arbitrary positions and orientations. The reticulated planar transmitter is equipped with four interleaved and overlapped meander coils, thus, a three-dimensional (3-D) rotating magnetic field is generated with the designed excitation current. Therefore, only a planar single-coil (such as a loop-type coil) is required to realize free-positioning omnidirectional WPT. According to the theoretical modeling of the magnetic field, the excitation current that can generate a 3-D rotating magnetic field is given. To obtain a uniform and strong magnetic field distribution, the transmitter grid width is optimized. Furthermore, an excitation current modulation strategy based on phase-shift control is presented to regulate the amplitude of the excitation current. The experimental results show that the output power is greater than 13.1 W no matter how the center of the receiver moves or rotates freely within 400 × 400 mm. When five receivers are powered simultaneously in different positions and orientations, 82.5 W total output power and 55.6% efficiency can be achieved. The experimental results demonstrate that free-positioning omnidirectional WPT can be realized with only planar single-coil receivers by using the proposed reticulated planar transmitter and its excitation current modulation strategy.