Wireless Power Transfer System via Magnetic Resonant Coupling at Fixed Resonance Frequency ―Power Transfer System Based on Impedance Matching

To increase the usage of electric vehicles (EV), a safe and convenient method to charge the vehicles is essential. Recently, an efficient mid range wireless power transfer that uses magnetic resonant coupling, WiTricity, was proposed, and has received much attention due to its practical range and efficiency. Studies show that the resonance frequency of the antennas changes as the gap between the antennas change. However, when this technology is applied in the MHz range (which allows small sized antennas), the usable frequency is bounded by the Industrial, Science, Medical (ISM) band. Therefore, to achieve maximum power transmission efficiency, the resonance frequency has to be fixed within the ISM band. In this paper, the possibility of using impedance matching (IM) networks to adjust the resonance frequency of a pair of antennas at a certain distance to 13.56MHz is studied. The simulations and experiments show that the IM circuits can change the frequency to 13.56MHz for different air gaps, improving the power transfer efficiency. Experiments also show that IM can be achieved just by observing and minimizing the reflected wave. Keywords— wireless power transfer, EV charging, magnetic resonance, magnetic coupling, impedance matching,