Highly Efficient Smart 3-Coil Wireless Power Transfer System with Automatic Tracking

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a highly efficient smart wireless powering platform based on object detection algorithm. Power transfer efficiency (PTE) and power-delivered-to-the-load (PDL) are two key parameters used to evaluate the performance of the proposed design. A 3-coil inductive link is used to achieve higher PTE than a 2-coil link when coupled at a considerable distance. The simple design methodology employed enables an optimised geometry for the 3-coil link. The optimised 3-coil link achieves a PTE of 62.1% in measurements. A wireless power transfer system is constructed with a Class-E primary coil driver with 60.6% efficiency. A camera-based tracking system is implemented to maintain the transfer link robustness under changing coupling conditions. The You Only Look Once version.4 (YOLO4) algorithm is used to detect the moving receiver with 71% accuracy and 0.2s response time, and stepper motors controlled by an Arduino process drive the transmitter coil to track the moving receiver coil.