This paper proposes an autonomous coil alignment system (ACAS) for electric vehicles (EVs) with dynamic wireless charging (DWC) to mitigate the reduction in received power caused by lateral misalignment between the source and load coils. The key component of the ACAS is a novel sensor coil design, which can detect the load coil’s left or right position relative to the source coil by observing the change in voltage phase. This allows the lateral misalignment to be estimated through the wireless power transfer (WPT) system alone, which is a novel tracking method for vehicular applications. Once misalignment is detected, the vehicle’s lateral position is self-adjusted by an autonomous steering function. The feasibility of the overall operation of the ACAS was verified through simulation and experiments. In addition, an analysis based on experimental results was conducted, demonstrating that 26% more energy can be transferred during DWC with the ACAS, just by keeping the vehicle’s load coil aligned with the source coil.

Capacitive power transfer (CPT) system can be employed for wireless charging of drone applications. However, in the CPT system, cross-coupling capacitance caused by coupling of the two pairs of plates on different sides, which do not form the main capacitance must be considered. Designs that do not properly consider the cross-coupling capacitance can cause decrease in the efficiency of the system. In this article, we propose a separate circular capacitive coupler for the CPT system. To reduce the cross-coupling capacitance in drone applications, the plates on the same side are separated. The circuit model of the coupler is presented; it considers a total of six coupling capacitances. For maximum power transfer efficiency, impedance of the receiver is considered to determine the parameter value of the LC resonance. Through simulation and measurement, we verified that the proposed separated circular coupler can reduce the cross-coupling capacitance. The plate-to-plate power transfer efficiency is maintained at 89.4% with 100-W output power.

Recently, maintenance applications around power lines have been actively studied. These applications usually supply power through magnetic energy harvesting(MEH) to devices around the power line. A major challenge for practical MEH is to overcome magnetic saturation, which can cause degradation of power density under a wide current range in the power line. In this paper, we propose a design methodology to harvest maximized output power by considering the saturation effect. To consider magnetic saturation, the output power model and the saturable magnetizing inductance model based on magnetizing current were comprehensively analyzed. Additionally, the critical point of saturation for the maximum harvested power was analyzed by considering different primary side current conditions. With the proposed design methodology, the accuracy and efficiency of the output model were verified with experimental results compared to the conventional model. To consider the real environment, a 150 kW class of AC resistor load bank was implemented to control the primary current from 0 to 100 A with power frequency of 60 Hz. Experimental results show that the proposed method can harvest an average power of 14.32 W on 70 A power line, which is an increase of 39.8 % compared with the conventional design method.

The paper proposes a method for locating an electric means of transportation such as electric vehicles that adopts dynamic wireless charging system. The method works with magnetic wireless power transfer systems, based on a ferrite core counting approach. The ferrite core counter system operates by counting all the ferrite cores of the source coils used for guiding the magnetic field in a magnetic wireless power transfer system. The proposed ferrite core counter has a position detection accuracy equivalent to the spacing of the ferrite cores. In addition, this paper proposes a ferrite position identification (FPID) messaging unit to correct ferrite core counter errors. FPID blocks which are successively placed under the source coil are recognized by the ferrite core counter, and their passage is reported as a sort of message in the vehicle. This FPID messaging unit provides the ferrite core counter with a system that can correct errors in the number of ferrite cores counted. The effectiveness of the vehicle positioning system with the ferrite core counter and the FPID messaging unit has been demonstrated through simulation and experiments.

Implantable medical devices (IMDs) enable patients to monitor their health anytime and receive treatment anywhere. However, due to the limited capacity of a battery, their functionalities are restricted, and the devices may not achieve their intended potential fully. The most promising way to solve this limited capacity problem is wireless power transfer (WPT) technology. In this study, a WPT based implantable electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring device that continuously records ECG data has been proposed, and its effectiveness is verified through an animal experiment using a rat model. Our proposed device is designed to be of size 24 × 27 × 8 mm, and it is small enough to be implanted in the rat. The device transmits data continuously using a low power Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communication technology. To charge the battery wirelessly, transmitting (Tx) and receiving (Rx) antennas were designed and fabricated. The animal experiment results clearly showed that our WPT system enables the device to monitor the ECG of a heart in various conditions continuously, while transmitting all ECG data in real-time.

Wireless power transfer systems are increasingly used as a means of charging implantable medical devices. However, the heat or thermal radiation from the wireless power transfer system can be harmful to biological tissue. In this research, we designed and implemented a wireless power transfer system-based implantable medical device with low thermal radiation, achieving 44.5% coil-to-coil efficiency. To suppress thermal radiation from the transmitting coil during charging, we minimized the ESR value of the transmitting coil. To increase power transfer efficiency, a ferrite film was applied on the receiving part. Based on analyses, we fabricated a cardiac monitoring system with dimensions of 17 × 24 × 8 mm³ and implanted it in a rat. We confirmed that the temperature of the wireless charging device increased by only 2 °C during the 70 min charging, which makes it safe enough to use as an implantable medical device charging system.