[W1F-2] 2013 Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference Proceedings

Wireless Power Transfer Guides

# * *
Ikuo Awai , Yuichi Sawahara , and Toshio Ishizaki
#
Ryutech Corporation, 1-5 Yokotani, Seta-oecho, Otsu 520-2194 Japan
*
School.of Science & Technology, Ryukoku University, 1-5 Yokotani, Seta-oecho, Otsu 520-2194 Japan
awai@ryutech.com

Abstract It is experimentally studied that the power transfer

efficiency is improved by inserting a proper structure made of
dielectrics, magnetic materials or metals between two spiral coils
constituting a coupled-resonator WPT (Wireless power transfer)
system. The structures can be hollow/solid circular cylinder,
plate or rectangular parallelepiped. The power transfer is based
on the coupling of evanescent fields, not propagating fields. The
principle of power guide is temporarily considered to be the
refraction of the electric and magnetic fields at the boundary of
2 different materials. But it is still not clear.
Index Terms WPT, guides, wireless power transfer,
evanescent wave, refraction of electric/magnetic fields, long
distance power transfer.
II. PET BOTTLE REPEATER WITH WATER INSIDE
Two types of spiral resonators shown in Fig. 1 are prepared
together with PET bottles with water inside for building the
WPT system shown in Fig. 2. Their dimension and
specifications are indicated in Fig.1
Common specs: wire diameter 1mm, coil diameter 30cm,
uniform winding, resonant frequency 2.3MHz
d Type A: 100 turns, both ends open
Type B: 22 turns, both ends shorted by 95pF capacitor

I. INTRODUCTION
Type B; shorted
When we want to extend the transfer distance of a coupled- spiral resonator
with external
resonator WPT (Wireless power transfer) system, we usually Type A; open capacitor
add resonators between the primary and secondary resonators spiral resonator
[1]-[3], which are often called repeaters. Though we can
achieve the objectives by doing that, the transfer efficiency is Fig. 1 Two coil resonators to build WPT system
deteriorated rapidly as the number of resonators increases, so
Loop Resonators Loop
that the extension of the distance is limited. coil PET bottles:
coil
The row of the resonators that makes the repeater system almost rectangular
reminds us of a lens guide that was studied at the beginning
parallelepiped
23x10x9.5cm
stage of the optical communication technology. The row of 2 liters capacity
lenses operated to focus and transfer the optical beam that PET bottles
spreads by the diffraction. Repeaters for the WPT system
could be considered to focus the EM field and transfer the Fig. 2 Repeater system using PET bottles with water inside
energy in the similar manner. Then, it is presumed that
dielectric or magnetic materials with a lens-like structure may Since Type A is a coil that oscillates by itself without an
behave as the repeaters, instead of coil resonators. external capacitor, the electric field distributes around it
Such a guide is based on a new concept and different from together with the magnetic field. As a result, the coupling
the well-known waveguide,. Though what is guided by a coefficient differs depending on the winding direction of the
waveguide is a wave, what we guide by the new structure is coils [4]. When the primary and secondary resonators are
an evanescent field, which does not carry energy itself. Thus arranged as shown in Fig. 3(a), the magnetic and electric
the new guide should be called a field-guide, which, we couplings are added each other, while they are subtracted
believe, is newly proposed. when arranged oppositely as in Fig. 3(b). The difference of
The present paper describes the experimental results on the the coupling coefficient is shown in Fig. 4.
field-guide, showing its energy guiding property and
unexpectedly high efficiency. Its principle is considered to be
the refraction of the electric and magnetic fields on the
boundary of different materials. But, a metal pipe is also
shown to guide energy through evanescent fields. Therefore,
more comprehensive principle should be proposed. It will be (a) Additive coupling (b) Subtractive coupling
arrangement arrangement
discussed elsewhere.
Fig. 3 Two winding directions for Type A resonator systems

77 978-1-4799-1472-2/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

 2013 Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference Proceedings

III. DIELECTRIC PIPE

Since the row of PET bottles has increased the efficiency,


a contiguous dielectric material, a pipe or rod for example,

could make a field-guide. We have prepared a polyethylene
pipe with outer diameter 34mm, thickness 3mm, arranging it
between two resonators of Type A in Fig. 1 as shown in Fig.
7. But we could not find any difference from the case


without the pipe. g g
d

L D=3.4
Fig. 4 Coupling coefficient as functions of resonator D d=43
distance Dielectric g=1.5
pipe unit: cm

Type B, on the other hand, has an external capacitor Resonator

connected in series to confine the electric energy. Thus the
Fig. 7 Structure of dielectric-pipe field-guide system
electric coupling coefficient is negligibly small resulting in
small difference of coupling coefficient for both
Thus, we poured water inside the pipe, and found the
arrangements. Their behaviors are also shown in Fig. 4.
coupling coefficient 0.016 compared with the value 0.004
Now, we insert the PET bottles between the primary and
without water for the pipe length 50cm. It is evident that the
secondary resonators for two different pairs A and B,
high permittivity of the water helped increase the electric
comparing with the case of no bottles. The alignment in Fig.
coupling coefficient. For the resonator pair of Type B, we
3(b) is omitted for both Type A and B. We can see the
could not find any difference by the pipe with water, because
increase of coupling coefficient for the pair of resonators A in
it has no electric field between resonators.
Fig. 5, due to the electric energy guided by the PET bottles

containing water with high permittivity.
The power transfer efficiency is also improved as shown in

Fig. 6 for Type A resonator pairs with additive coupling

arrangement. Since it is hard to match the system for the case

of strong coupling (small resonator distance), the calculated
efficiencies using the measured coupling coefficient and

unloaded Q of each resonator is also shown in the figure.



Fig. 8 Coupling coefficient with and without water pipe

IV. FERRITE PLATE
We have put ferrite plates at the space between the two
resonators of Type B with 10turns, diameter 10cm and
external capacitor 69pF as shown in Fig. 9. The ferrite is
TDK PC95 and its size is 5x5x0.5mm. The resonators are

placed 11cm apart and 1 or 2 ferrites are put between them.
Fig. 5 Effect of water to coupling coefficient The 2 ferrites are aligned in series along the center line

between the resonators. Significant increase of coupling
coefficient has been observed, 0.034 and 0.090 for 1 and 2
ferrites, respectively, compared to 0.022 for no ferrite.

Fig.6 Effect of water to transfer efficiency of Type A system Fig. 9 Experimental set up for measuring ferrite effect

78
 2013 Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference Proceedings

#1; r=15, r=100

#2; r=1, r=100

Fig. 10 Simulated coupling coefficient for system shown in
Fig. 9 Fig. 12 Transfer rate with and without metal pipe

A simulated result is shown as line#1 in Fig. 10, which In Fig. 13, the inner diameter of the pipe is changed
replicates the experimental result well. Another line #2 keeping the length constant as 37cm. The result is rather
indicates a result for a hypothetical ferrite with no dielectric beyond expectation, the coupling coefficient being very small
property. It shows that the ferrite guide effect mainly comes for the pipe diameter over 20cm. It should be clarified why
from its magnetic property. the magnetic field lines close to the outer edge of the spiral
does not contribute to the coupling.
V. METAL PIPE

After we find that a structure like a dielectric wave-guide

behaves as a field-guide, we may consider a structure like a

metal wave-guide should work also as a field-guide. The

same structure as Fig. 7 is used for the guide, where a

cylindrical copper pipe is placed between the two Type A

resonators in Fig. 1. The dimensions in the present case are,
D=11.5cm, L=5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 120cm, g=3cm and pipe

thickness 0.2mm. The coupling coefficient is measured and Fig. 13 Coupling coefficient as functions of pipe diameter
depicted in Fig. 11 as a function of the distance between the
resonators, which indicates the metal pipe is an
extraordinarily good field-guide. The coupling coefficient VI. CONCLUSION
without the pipe is also shown in the same figure contrasted We have found that a dielectric, magnetic or metal structure
by a quite fast decay according to the increase of resonator inserted between the primary and secondary resonators of a
distance. coupled-resonator WPT system increases the coupling
Its principle is easily understood by considering the coefficient and improves the power transfer efficiency. We
boundary condition for the magnetic field on the conductor call those systems the field-guide, which makes an
surface. It is known the magnetic field should be parallel to evanescent mode counterpart of the waveguide for the
the surface, which makes the magnetic field lines that go out propagating mode.
perpendicular from the spiral coil surface guided along the
surface of the copper pipe to the other end. The power
transfer rate is significantly increased due to the increase of REFERENCES
coupling coefficient as shown in Fig. 12 [1] K.E, Koh, T.C Beh, T Imura and Y Hori, Multi-receiver and

repeater wireless power transfer via magnetic resonance
coupling Impedance matching and power division utilizing
impedanceinverter, 15th International Conference on

Electrical Machines and Systems (ICEMS 2012), pp. 1-6, 2012.

[2] D. Ahn and S. Hong, A study on magnetic field repeater in
wireless power transfer, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electronics, vol. 60
no. 1, p. 360-371, 2013.

[3] I Awai and T. Ishizaki, Design of Magnetic resonance type
WPT systems based on filter theory, IEEJ Trans. EIS, vol. 132,
no.8, pp. 1301-1309, 2012 (In Japanese).
[4] I. Awai, Y. Zhang, T. Komori and T. Ishizaki, Coupling
coefficient of spiral resonators used for wireless power transfer,
Fig. 11 Coupling coefficient as functions of resonator Proc. 2010APMC, pp. 1328-1331, 2010.
distance

79