A Shared Channel Design for the Power and Signal Transfers of Electric-field Coupled Power Transfer Systems

Abstract

Electric-field coupled power transfer (ECPT) systems have been proposed as an alternative wireless power transfer (WPT) technology in recent years. With the use of capacitive plates as a coupling structure, ECPT systems have many advantages such as design flexibility, reduced volume of the coupling structure and metal penetration ability. In addition, wireless communications are effective solutions to improve the safety and controllability of ECPT systems. This paper proposes a power and signal shared channel for electric-field coupled power transfer systems. The shared channel includes two similar electrical circuits with a band pass filter and a signal detection resistor in each. This is designed based on the traditional current-fed push-pull topology. An analysis of the mutual interference between the power and signal transmission, the channel power and signal attenuations, and the dynamic characteristic of the signal channel are conducted to determine the values for the electrical components of the proposed shared channel. Experimental results show that the designed channel can transfer over 100W of output power and data with a data rate from 300bps to 120 kbps.