Six Degrees of Freedom Mobile Inductive Power Transfer by Crossed Dipole Tx and Rx Coils

Crossed dipole coils for the wide-range 3-D omnidirectional inductive power transfer (IPT) are proposed. Free positioning of a plane receiving (Rx) coil is obtained for an arbitrary direction within 1m from a plane transmission (Tx) coil. Both the Tx and Rx coils consists of crossed dipole coils with an orthogonal phase difference; hence, a rotating magnetic field is generated from the Tx, which enables the Rx to receive power vertically or horizontally. Thus, the 3-D omnidirectional IPT is first realized for both the plate type Tx and Rx coils, which is crucial for practical applications, where volumetric coil structure is highly prohibited. This optimized configuration of coils has been obtained through a general classification of power transfer and searching for mathematical constraints on multi-D omnidirectional IPT. Conventional loop coils are thoroughly analyzed, and verified to be inadequate for the plate-type omnidirectional IPT in this paper. Simulation-based design of the proposed crossed dipole coils for a uniform magnetic field distribution is provided, and the 3-D omnidirectional IPT is experimentally verified by prototype Rx coils for a wireless power-zone of 1 m(3) with a prototype Tx coil of 1 m(2) at an operating frequency of 280 kHz, meeting the power matters alliance. The maximum overall efficiency was 33.6% when the input power was 100 W.