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Efficiency Analysis of Magnetic Resonance

Wireless Power Transfer With Intermediate
Resonant Coil
ARTICLE in IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS FEBRUARY 2011
Impact Factor: 1.95 DOI: 10.1109/LAWP.2011.2150192 Source: IEEE Xplore

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 10, 2011

389

Efficiency Analysis of Magnetic Resonance Wireless

Power Transfer With Intermediate Resonant Coil
JinWook Kim, Hyeon-Chang Son, Kwan-Ho Kim, and Young-Jin Park, Member, IEEE

AbstractThis letter presents an efficiency analysis of a magnetic resonance wireless power transfer (WPT) system with an
intermediate resonant coil. A helical coil and a spiral coil with
an additional capacitor are considered as resonant coils for the
WPT system. The intermediate resonant coil is set up coaxially
and perpendicular to both the Tx and Rx resonant coils in order
to observe the efficiency change according to the directions.
The power efficiency is calculated using the temporal coupled
mode theory (CMT). Impedance matching conditions are also
shown by using the CMT. Analysis results show that using an
intermediate coil properly improves efficiency and extends the
distance between the transmitter and receiver. Both calculated
and measured efficiencies are in good agreement. It is also shown
that the intermediate resonant system has a good efficiency and is
superior to nonintermediate systems.

Fig. 1. Configuration of a magnetic resonance WPT system with an intermediate resonant coil.

Index TermsCoupled mode theory (CMT), intermediate coil,

magnetic resonant coupling, wireless power transfer (WPT).

I. INTRODUCTION
IRELESS power transfer (WPT) using magnetic field
resonance in a near-field region has attracted much attention since WPT via strongly coupled magnetic resonances
was reported [1][4]. In [2] and [4], a resonance-based WPT
system is analyzed using a circuit-based model, and design and
optimization procedures were reported.
Recently, an intermediate resonant coil between transmitting (Tx) and receiving (Rx) resonant coils was used [5].
Compared to the two resonant coil systems in [2] and [4],
an intermediate resonant coil system with the same resonant
frequency between Tx and Rx resonant coils can be applied
effectively to extend the distance of power delivery or increase
power transfer efficiency. However, to date, detailed analyses
of power transfer efficiency depending on Tx, Rx, and intermediate resonant coils are not available.
In this letter, the power efficiency of a magnetic resonance
wireless power transfer system with an intermediate resonant
coil is analyzed. The intermediate resonant system (intermediate
system) is very useful in extending transfer distance and can be
applied to household electric appliances such as a wall-mounted
TV. In particular, the intermediate resonant coil is geometrically
perpendicular to a Tx resonant coil and a Rx resonant coil. A
spiral coil is used to reduce the volume of the intermediate resonant coil, while helical coils are used for Tx and Rx resonant

coils. High- capacitors are added to the coils in order to adjust the resonant frequency of the resonant coils and reduce the
worse effects on power transfer. Otherwise, variation in the resonant frequency caused by external objects is increased due to
the small amount of self-capacitance in the helical and spiral
coils.
In the following sections, efficiencies derived in the intermediate system are shown using the CMT and the modified
CMT. The efficiencies are compared to an arrangement in which
the intermediate resonant coil is changed coaxially and perpendicularly to the normal direction of both the Tx and Rx resonant coils. The frequency shifting and change of impedance
matching conditions are also shown. The measured data are
compared to theoretical calculations.
II. DERIVATION OF THE POWER TRANSFER EFFICIENCY
Fig. 1 shows the configuration of a magnetic resonance WPT
with an intermediate resonant coil. The variables of , ,
,
, and
are denoted as coupling coefficients
between coils. The intermediate resonant coil is placed between the Tx and Rx resonant coils, and the central axis is not
aligned with that of Tx and Rx resonant coils.
and
are
center-to-center spacing distances between the Tx resonant coil
and the intermediate resonant coil, between Tx and Rx resonant
coils, respectively.
By applying CMT, the intermediate system is presented as
follows:

Manuscript received March 08, 2011; accepted April 21, 2011. Date of publication May 02, 2011; date of current version May 16, 2011.
The authors are with the Department of Power Electric Equipment Information and Communication, University of Science and Technology (UST) and
Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI), Ansan 426-170, Korea
(e-mail: yjpark@keri.re.kr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2011.2150192
1536-1225/$26.00 2011 IEEE

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 10, 2011

where
1 (Tx), 2 (Rx), and (intermediate resonant coil);
mode amplitude of each resonant coil;
resonant angular frequency of each resonant coil;
intrinsic decay rate of each resonant coil;
coupling coefficient between resonant coils (or a coil
and a resonant coil);
relative decay rate in the Rx resonant coil due to the
power transfer to the load coil [6].
Power transfer efficiency for the WPT system using an intermediate resonant coil is derived as shown in (2) at bottom of the
page. For maximum power efficiency, the parameter is derived
as follows:

(3)
Now, by using the power efficiency formula in (2), the power
transfer efficiency is analyzed in three different practical cases.
A. Case 1 (

In this case, the Tx and Rx resonant coils are identical. However, an intermediate resonant coil is different from the Tx and
Rx resonant coils. The coupling coefficient between the Tx and
intermediate resonant coils is not the same as the coupling cois
efficient between the Rx and intermediate resonant coils.
large enough to neglect the direct coupling coefficient between
the Tx and Rx resonant coils.
By substituting for
and for
at (2)
and (3), respectively, the power efficiency can be simplified as
follows:

(4)
To maximize the efficiency, the parameter,
should be satisfied with (5) when

[1]

(5)
By the relation among the arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic averages, the maximum efficiency can be achieved for
the case
, that is,
because
is included

Fig. 2. Efficiencies of nonintermediate and intermediate systems with varying

=(0 0 ) ;  =(00 ) .

in common. Thus, maximum efficiency is obtained with the intermediate resonant coil in the center between the Tx and Rx
resonant coils.
,
,
)
B. Case 2 (
The condition for maximum efficiency is obtained as
from Case 1. The system is satisfied with
from Case 2 in general cases. On the basis of the prior case, the
power transfer efficiency is derived as follows:

(6)
The efficiency is expressed as the function of variable
. The case is compared to a nonintermediate casethat is, the system of only Tx and Rx resonant coils
without the intermediate resonant coil.
Fig. 2 shows the efficiencies for the two cases with varying
. The circular-marked line and the square-marked line indicate the efficiencies of a nonintermediate system and an intermediate system, respectively. The results show that the efficiency
of the intermediate system is 5% points less than that of the nonlower than 100, while
intermediate system for the value of
the efficiencies of both cases for
higher than 100 are almost
the same. In addition, it should be noted that an efficiency of
better than 90% can be achieved even in a perpendicularly arranged intermediate system with
higher than 27.
C. Case 3 (Case 2 Including Source and Load Coils)
In this case, the source and load coils are added in the condition of Case 2. For the analysis, a modified CMT formula is

(2)

KIM et al.: EFFICIENCY ANALYSIS OF MAGNETIC RESONANCE WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER WITH INTERMEDIATE RESONANT COIL

391

Fig. 4. Schematic drawing of the Tx/Rx and intermediate resonant coils.

TABLE I
SPECIFIC PARAMETERS OF RESONANT COILS AND COUPLING COEFFICIENTS
Fig. 3. Efficiencies versus normalized frequency for three different matching
conditions (U = 30).

obtained by referring to [7] and is shown in (7) at the bottom of

the page.
are field amplitudes of incident field
and reHere,
at the source, and
are field amplitudes at the
flect field
load. The rates of field amplitudes
are scattering parameters. By applying the conditions obtained in the
,
), the field amplitude
prior cases (
transmitted to the load from source
is obtained as

(8)
where
,
is also obtained as follows:

,
. Power transfer efficiency
(9)

The impedance matching condition is obtained by finding the

maximum power transfer efficiency of (9). The matching condition is
when
. The
derived efficiency formula is identical with (6) for the matching
condition.
Fig. 3 shows efficiencies versus normalized frequency for
three different matching conditions with
and
.
In the case of the undercoupling condition
, three
peak frequencies are observed. Maximum power transfer
efficiency is obtained at the center frequency. In the case of
the overcoupling condition
, peak frequency
is observed at the center frequency. In the critical coupling
, the system has the best efficiency at the center
frequency compared to other conditions. In the under- and

overcoupling conditions, maximum power transfer efficiency

cannot be achieved. Thus, satisfying the impedance matching
condition is very important for higher efficiency.
III. EFFICIENCY OF THE INTERMEDIATE SYSTEM
Tx and Rx resonant coils are designed using a helical coil
(
mm,
mm,
turns,
mm)
as shown in Fig. 4 (left). The intermediate resonant coil is a
single-layer spiral coil (
mm,
mm,
turns,
mm) as shown in Fig. 4 (right). Two coils
are made of copper pipe. To adjust the resonant frequency of
the resonant coils, a lumped high- capacitor is connected in
parallel. Single-loop coils are made to form a source coil and
a load coil. They are then placed for coupling and impedance
matching as shown in Fig. 1.
A vector network analyzer (Agilent 4395A) is used to find
the resonant frequency and measure transmission behavior between Tx and Rx. The measured intrinsic decay rate, -factor,
connected lumped capacitance, and resonant frequency of the
resonant coils are illustrated in Table I. The results show that the
resonant frequencies of the fabricated resonant coils are almost
the same because the resonant frequencies are adjusted using

(7)

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 10, 2011

Fig. 5. Fabricated intermediate system (a) coaxially arranged intermediate

system and (b) perpendicularly arranged intermediate system.

high- capacitors. For measuring the coupling coefficient

,
splitting frequencies between the Tx (or Rx) coil and the intermediate resonant coil are checked according to distance as
shown in [8].
Fig. 5 shows two fabricated intermediate systems: One is
with the intermediate resonant coil coaxially arranged; the
other is with the intermediate resonant coil perpendicularly
arranged. The intermediate resonant coil is placed in the center
between the two coils. For the perpendicularly arranged intermediate system, the spiral intermediate resonant coil is placed
). As shown in Table I,
are about four
at ( 230 mm, 0,
times and five times bigger than
in the cases of perpendicularly and coaxially arranged systems, respectively, when
cm,
cm. Thus, the condition
is
satisfied in the distance over 80 cm. The matching conditions
are changed according to movement of the source and load
coils. Therefore, the source and load coils are set up properly to
get the critical coupling in the Case 3 for the maximum power
transfer efficiency.
Fig. 6 shows the comparison between theoretical and measured results for three different systems. The measured intrinsic
decay rates of coils and coupling coefficients are used in theoretical calculation. First, the calculated and measured results of the
nonintermediate system are the circular-marked solid line and
the gray circles, respectively. Second, the square-marked and
triangular-marked solid lines are the theoretical results of the
cases in which the intermediate systems were arranged coaxially
and perpendicularly, respectively, while the gray squares and triangles are the measured results. Finally, the measurements and
the calculations for the three different systems are shown. The
comparison results for three cases show that the calculations are
in excellent agreement with the measurements. Moreover, the
efficiency of the coaxially arranged intermediate system is the
best at the same distance. The reason is that the coupling coefficient is the highest because the strongest magnetic field exists
at the normal direction of the helical coil.
IV. CONCLUSION
The efficiency formulas of magnetic resonance wireless
power transfer using an intermediate resonant coil were derived

Fig. 6. Efficiencies in cases of the coaxially and perpendicular arranged inter= Z =2).
mediate systems and nonintermediate system. (Z

and analyzed by using temporal CMT in the intermediate

system. The theoretical calculations have a good agreement
with the measured results. It is shown that, compared to the
nonintermediate system, efficiency is improved considerably in
the cases of not only a coaxially arranged intermediate system,
but also a perpendicularly arranged intermediate system. It is
also shown that the power efficiency of the coaxially arranged
intermediate system is the best. However, from a practical point
of view, the perpendicularly arranged intermediate system
can be widely used to extend the range of wireless power
transfer and enhance efficiency since the intermediate resonant
coil can be implemented adaptively in the space. Examples
are wall-mounted TVs and furniture embedded systems. The
derived formulas can be also used for optimization of the
efficiency in the intermediate system.
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[5] R. E. Hamam, A. Karalis, J. D. Joannopoulos, and M. Soljacic, Efficient weakly-radiative wireless energy transfer: An EIT-like approach,
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