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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMSI: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 62, NO. 1, JANUARY 2015

FPGA-Based Implementation of Multiple Modes

in Near Field Inductive Communication Using
Frequency Splitting and MIMO Configuration
Hoang Nguyen, Student Member, IEEE, Johnson I. Agbinya, and John Devlin

AbstractConventional near field inductive wireless power

transfer theory shows that systems suffer from splitting frequency
behaviors when strong coupling condition exists between the
transmitter and the receiver. However, this characteristic has not
been explored for communication. Our analysis demonstrates that
the splitting behaviour of frequency creates multiple frequencies
that support inductive communication in MIMO configuration.
As a result, we implement a binary chirp modulation on an FPGA
and validate two channel communication using splitting. This
paper introduces the use of chirp signals to spread data and excite
inductive MIMO systems. The simulation and experiment show
that the splitting frequency depends on a quality factor and the
flux coupling condition between the data source and receiver. In
other words, the degree of mutual coupling defines the splitting
mode. This paper proves that multi-channel communication using
splitting can be used for data transmission. The results show that
data rates of 50 Mbps or 69 Kbps can be achieved for each channel
between the transmitters and receivers when the transmitter and
receiver operate at the original resonant frequency of 13.56 MHz
or 28 KHz, respectively and the distance between them varies
from about 1 cm to 10 cm.
Index TermsFrequency splitting, MIMO inductive communication, near field magnetic induction communication.

I. INTRODUCTION

N NEAR FIELD inductive wireless power transfer (WPT),

the source coil transfers a magnetic energy effectively to
the destination coil at a single stable resonant frequency [1].
However, a degradation of the magnetic flux between the source
and the destination causes changes of the resonant operating frequency and performance of the transmission links. The quality
of the magnetic flux linkage is represented by the coupling coefficient, which depends on the physical dimensions of transmitter
and receiver coils and the distance between them. Hence, the
gap influences the received power in the near field region. This
is quantified in terms of weakly/loosely, strongly and critical
couplings [2]. To date, this single transmitter-receiver bounds to
one frequency and one channel communication. At the critical
coupling regime and distances that are shorter than the critical
coupling distance, the resonant peak disappears and splits into
two peaks. Therefore, a receiver tuned to the resonant frequency
Manuscript received February 24, 2014; revised June 20, 2014 and August 28,
2014; accepted September 07, 2014. Date of publication October 08, 2014; date
of current version January 06, 2015. This paper was recommended by Associate
Editor R. Gomez-Garcia.
The authors are with the Department of Electronic Engineering, La Trobe
University, Bundoora, Victoria 3086, Australia (e-mail: nghoang_98@yahoo.
com; h11nguyen@students.latrobe.edu.au; J.Agbinya@latrobe.edu.au; J.Devlin@latrobe.edu.au).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCSI.2014.2359716

location misses the strong signal required for effective communication. Thus, to receive optimal power, the receiver should
tune to either or both of the split frequencies. Consequently, this
paper applies the splitting behavior to the models of single input
multiple outputs (SIMO), multiple inputs single input (MISO)
and multiple inputs multiple outputs (MIMO) to diversify the
frequencies and channels of communications.
The non-radiative WPT in [1] has not only triggered research
of contactless energy transfers [3][6] but also of magnetic induction (MI) communications such as underwater applications
[7], [8], body area network [9], [10] and Internet of things [11].
Many well designed modulation methods have used a single
channel in uni-direction or bi-direction at resonant frequency.
These modulation schemes have included on-off keying (OOK)
[10], [12], load shift keying [13], amplitude shift keying, frequency shift keying [14], [15], QPSK [16], pulse harmonic modulation [17] and recently direct antenna modulation [18]. However, their work has not yet been demonstrated for multiple communication systems and designs operate at one frequency. By
adding more resonators to the transmitter and receiver, Macro
et al. [19], [20] study the dual band and multiple band resonant frequency separations for wireless power transfer and data
communication. The multiple frequencies are created from different internal RLC circuits, which make the system configuration complicated. Furthermore, their work is established for
a single input and single out (SISO) system. Recently, Dukju
Ahn and Songcheol Hong investigate the effects of coupling efficiency on the resonant frequency in [21], [22]. Their work is
successful in tuning the frequency to increase the efficiency and
power transfer of multiple coil systems. Nevertheless, the use of
splitting mode behaviors for multiple frequencies has not been
considered for communications. Therefore, in this project we
propose the design of the flux coupling conditions for multiple
frequencies. The degrees of coupling condition provide multiple
communications and enhance the system capacity.
As mentioned by [23], at a close proximity between the receivers, the system transfer function manifests several peaks at
the mode splitting frequencies. Nonetheless, [23] does not investigate the effects of coupling between the transmitters and
between transmitter-receivers. Several studies [21], [24], [25]
discuss the use of coupling in the MIMO configuration to maximize the power transfer, efficiency, and channel characterization
of systems. Yet, [21], [24], [25] do not research the degree of
couplings as the sources of multiple frequency transmissions in
MIMO system to transfer data, which is addressed in our paper.
The work presented in this paper lays claim to the following
contributions:

1549-8328 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

NGUYEN et al.: FPGA-BASED IMPLEMENTATION OF MULTIPLE MODES IN NEAR FIELD INDUCTIVE COMMUNICATION

303

. The values of k measure the strength

cient
of the fluxes produced by the transmitter, which is transferred
to the receiver, and vice versa. For the two single layer circular
coils in Fig. 1, the coupling coefficient is defined by a function of
the coil radius of the transmitter and the receiver ( and ) and
the distance (x) between them as
[2]. If the coils are identical, the coupling value depends mainly
on the movable distances between the coils. After simplifying
(1), the power transfer is written as:

Fig. 1. Single resonator and equivalent circuit model.

(2)

Fig. 2. Power transfer at different coupling coefficients. The inductance

and capacitance
are 67.8
and 476.53 nF, respectively.
Original resonant frequency is 28 KHz.

We demonstrate the splitting frequency condition and

power transfer for the SISO, SIMO, MISO, and MIMO
systems.
We distinguish between two cases of splitting frequency
with and without cross-coupling.
We identify and analyze each type of splitting frequency
and normalize it in formulas.
As a practical evaluation of our proposal we design and implement an FPGA-based transceiver using the chirp modulation scheme to transfer data.
The rest of this paper is presented as follows. Section II introduces a theory of splitting frequencies for SISO, SIMO, MISO,
and MIMO systems. Section III validates the multiple frequency
modes. Section IV proposes the new model of a frequency continuous wave technique, which is used to modulate and demodulate the signals in the near field inductive communication. The
implementation of an embedded modulator in Section V is designed to evaluate the proof of concept for system performance.
The experimental results are discussed in Section VI. The last
section is our conclusion.

The relationship between the power transfer in (2) and the frequency response at different given level of k is plotted in Fig. 2.
It can be seen that at strong coupling (close distance), the power
transfer of the circuit peaks at two frequencies. The position of
frequency change is defined by the critical coupling coefficient
condition as
[26]. The double peaks in
Fig. 2 are referred to as the splitting frequencies of the circuit,
which are calculated as the odd or even frequency in [26], [27]
and
. This formula clearly
explains the shift of splitting frequency when the coupling coefficient varies. Furthermore, the separation of two peaks is determined by the increasing of the coupling coefficient. Consequently, at a variable gap between two coils and under strong
coupling, multiple frequencies are created from the splitting
frequency. We will use this concept for analyzing the splitting
mode of multiple transmitters and receivers.
B. Single Transmitter and Multiple Receiver Configuration
Fig. 3 presents a transmitter and N receivers. Each receiver
is coupled with a transmitter by the individual coupling coefficients
. The cross-couplings between the receivers are named
and
). It is
shown in [21] that under strong coupling and high Q, the circuit
analyses of each loop in the transmitter and N receivers can be
identified by the following matrix equation:

II. SPLITTING FREQUENCY OF MI MODELS

..
.

A. Single Transmitter-Receiver
A single MI system can be represented by the RLC lumped
circuit theory as in Fig. 1, where the source and destination coils
with radii and respectively transfer energy wirelessly over
the distance x. Based on Kirchhoffs voltage law (KVL), the
AC source voltage across the transmitting and receiving circuit
is governed by the following equation:
(1)
inducing
where, the circuit is excited by the input voltage
current
and
in the first and second loops. The impedances of the transmitter and receiver are
and
,
respectively. The mutual inductance
between them is related to their self inductance by means of the coupling coeffi-

..
.

..
.

..
.

(3)

where, the inductor factors are defined as

and
. The cur. Mathematically, (3)
rent transform is
shows the relationship of the frequency response to the coupling
coefficients and the inductor factors. Since antenna coils are
similar, the splitting frequencies of the system can be normalized according to the values of the coupling coefficients. However, the coupling coefficients are classified into three cases including a balanced coupling of transmitter-receivers in [21], unbalanced coupling of transmitter-receivers and cross-coupling
between N receivers. Thus, we analyze the effect of coupling in
two and N receivers.
1) A Transmitter and Two Receivers (SI2O): Applying (3),
we can rewrite the expression for the SI2O system as the 3x3

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Fig. 3. Single transmitter and multiple receivers.

Fig. 4. Multiple transmitters and single receiver.

Fig. 6. Power efficiency for one transmitter and two receivers in 3-D view. (a)
is without cross-coupling and (b) is with cross-coupling.
Fig. 5. Multiple transmitters and multiple receivers.

matrix below:
(4)
, the matrix A in (4) can give
By solving for the factor
maximum of three eigenvalues corresponding to the three splitting frequencies. However, these values depend on the value of
coupling coefficients. Thus, in the following analysis we define
the two cases of splitting frequency with and without cross-coupling.
Without cross-coupling
Case 1: when
, three splitting frequencies
are obtained from (4) as:
(5)
Case 2: when
, another three frequencies are
also yielded as:
(6)
Equation (6) is similar to the work in [22]. However, the author introduces the splitting frequency for another model.
With cross-coupling
Case 1: when
, there are two
splitting frequencies as:
(7)
Case 2: when
frequencies is calculated as:

2) A Transmitter and N Receivers (SIMO): The similar

method is applied to coupled N receivers. The splitting frequencies are also normalized as in the following formulas:
Without cross-coupling
Case 1: For the same couplings, three splitting frequencies
are written as:
(8)
Case 2: For different couplings from a transmitter to receivers, the splitting frequencies are given as:
(9)

With cross-coupling: When all couplings are equal, the

splitting frequencies are found as
and
. We observe that cross-coupling is detrimental to frequency splitting.
C. Multiple Transmitter and Single Receiver
Fig. 4 illustrates many transmitters and one receiver model,
where the directed coupling of transmitters-receiver are
and the cross-couplings between transmitters are
. Using the same method in SIMO,
the matrix A of the MISO circuit can be arranged as:

..
.

..
.

..
.

..
.

..
.

(10)

, three splitting
,

and
.
Case 1 and 2 above show that the system generates three splitting frequencies instead of two frequencies when the cross-coupling is unequally coupled, because matrix A in (3) gives three
eigenvalues.

where, the inductor factors are given as

and
. The splitting
frequencies are also solved by calculating the eigenvalues of
matrix A in (10). Similar results are found in MISO except that
N is the number of transmitters.

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305

Fig. 7. Even and odd mode splitting frequencies of two and three transmitters.

Fig. 8. Three dimentional plot of the power transfer and the contour of the even
and odd frequencies at the 90% efficiency is shown for two transmitters and two
receivers with/without cross-coupling.

Fig. 9. Two peaks in the spectrum show a good match in both models.
TABLE I
SPLITTING FREQUENCIES FOR 1TX-2RX AND 2TX-1RX MODELS

D. Multiple Transmitters and Multiple Receivers (MIMO)

The configuration of the two transmitters and two receivers is
displayed in Fig. 5. Applying the similar method, the A matrix
can be derived as:
III. SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENT RESULTS OF SPLITTING
FREQUENCIES
A. Simulation
(11)
where the inductor factors stand for
,
,
,
,
, and
. Two situations of splitting frequency with/without
cross-coupling are then followed.
Without cross-coupling
Case 1) At similar coupling, (11) gave three frequencies
as:
(12)
Case 2) At different coupling, the split frequencies
are calculated as:
and
.
With cross-coupling
Case 1) At similar coupling, we have two splitand
ting frequencies:
.
Case 2) At
(n is real number) the
and
splitting frequencies are
.

The objective of this section is to demonstrate and verify the

creation of multiple splitting frequencies from the effect of the
coupling coefficient in three proposed MI models. The systems
of two and three transmitters/receivers is simulated for three
models.
SIMO: The power transfer of Tx-2Rx as a function of couin this case) and
pling coefficient ( set above
frequency is introduced in Fig. 6. It is clear from the plot that
at any value of coupling coefficient, the received powers always have a maximum efficiency of 90% at two peak frequencies. These two peak frequencies are normally referred to as
even and odd mode frequencies [21], [23]. In the case without
cross-coupling, it is shown that when couplings from the transmitter to receiver increase, the even frequency comes close to
0.64 resonant frequencies and the odd frequency moves forward to infinity. At lower coupling, the even mode frequency
nearly reaches the original resonant frequency. For example, in
the case of
, the even frequency equals 0.88 resonant frequency. This trend of splitting frequencies is predicted by (5).
Comparing with a single transmitter-receiver, the splitting frequency of a single transmitter and two receivers yields a narrower band between the even and the odd frequencies than that
of a single transmitter-receiver system. It should be noted that

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Fig. 10. (a) is modulator and (b) is demodulator.

in both cases, the odd frequency approaches infinity. However,

in the case of a single pair system, the even frequency reaches
0.7 resonant frequency instead of the 0.5774 value for the case
of 1Tx-2Rx with cross-coupling interaction as shown in Fig. 6
and (7).
MISO: The even and odd modes relating to couplings of two
and three transmitters are illustrated in Fig. 7. For the even
mode, the frequencies are slowly reduced as the transmitter increases. For example, at
and without cross-coupling,
the even frequency is 75% of the original resonant frequency
for two transmitters and 70% for three transmitters. With crosscoupling, it can achieve only 65% and 60%, respectively. The
right panel of Fig. 7 illustrates that the odd frequencies with the
cross-coupling effect appoach infinity with any number of transmitters. However, without the cross-coupling, the odd frequencies approach infinity at a smaller k (0.5) for three transmitters
than that (0.7) for two transmitters.
MIMO: The power transfer of 2Tx-2Rx with/without crosscoupling is shown in the three dimentional view of Fig. 8. It
can be seen that without cross-coupling, the even frequencies
reach 57.74% of the resonant frequency when the coupling is 1,
whereas the odd frequencies appoach infinity when the coupling
is 0.5. This is true as in (12), the denominator of equals 1.7 at
goes to zero at
. Morek=1 and the denominator of
over, the level of k required for the odd frequencies to approach
infinity is negatively related to the number of the transmitters as
goes to zero at
. For example,
the denominator of
if k equals 0.2 and 0.5, the number of the transmitters is 5 and 2,
respectively. The contour plot of Fig. 8 illustrates that the odd
mode frequency moves to infinity more slowly with cross-coupling than it does without the cross-coupling.
B. Experiment
Two configurations are established to analyze the multiple
splitting frequencies in the inductive communication. In the
SIMO, the transmitter is located in the middle of two receivers,
while in the MISO, the receiver is hung between two transmitters (see also in Fig. 12). The gaps from the middle coil
to other coils are called d1 and d2. The channels of Tektronix
TDS 2024B oscilloscope are linked to the transmitters and
receivers. Using a FFT menu, the details of frequency changes
at the receivers corresponding to the separations are introduced
in Table I. It can be seen that by adjusting the positions of the
transmitter or receiver coils, the frequencies vary according
to the splitting modes. Therefore, multiple frequencies are
achieved by a proper arrangement of the coils. In addition,
the experimental splitting frequencies are consistent with what
could be obtained by (5)to (7). Furthermore, if the distances
d1 and d2 are equal, the receivers generate similar splitting
frequencies for both models as indicated in Table I. Fig. 9
refers to the spectrum of the received signals when coupling

coefficients are
and
for both 1Tx-2Rx (red
line) and 2Tx-1Rx (blue line) models.
IV. MAGNETIC COMMUNICATION BASED ON CHIRP
Because multiple splitting frequencies are found as the variable distance of multiple transmitters/receivers, adaptive frequency tracking is required for this phenomenon. One way to
achieve this scheme is to use a chirp signal to transfer and spread
the data. A chirp refers to a signal in which the frequency vary
with time. Therefore, we can use Chirps to transfer the data at
any splitting frequencies. Chirps also help to identify the mode
of splitting frequency and thus to identify the distance between
the transmitter and receiver. In our models, the binary phase
chirp modulation is based on the theory of a chirp spread spectrum in [28], [29]. The following discussion introduces the techniques of the chirp modulation and demodulation for our design.
A. Linear Binary Chirp Modulation
The min and max frequency of the chirp is chosen within the
band of multiple splitting frequencies calculated from the coupling coefficient
. In our paper, the chirp
signal is designed to operate from 5 MHz to 55 MHz and 20
KHz to 89 KHz, which are used with the original resonant frequencies of 13.56 MHz and 28 KHz, respectively. This spectral
band also covers the frequencies within coupling coefficients
. The block diagram of the modulator and demodulator in Matlab simulink is illustrated in Fig. 10. In the
modulator, transmitted data are introduced from a Random Integer generator and the data rates are spread by the wideband
of the chirp signal. The chirp signal is created inside the transmitter block and its phase is also changed 180 accordingly to
the binary bit 1 and 0 of transmitted data. In the demodulator, the received signal from MI models is also multiplied with
an identical chirp. Next, it is filtered by the integrated block and
compared to a given threshold (0.01) to produce the data. The
simulation shows the similar transmitted data, modulated signal,
received signal and converted data as the experimental results
exhibited in Fig. 16.
B. BER Performance
Normally, in RF engineering, the received signal contains additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). The noise comes from
the effects of the environment or multi path signals before the
signal is acquired at the demodulator block [28]. The interference noise of MI communication could be from the different
transmission media [7], [8], [30] or metallic objects [31]. In our
models, the AWGN noise power is added. The probability of
bit error between the transmitted and received data is plotted
in Fig. 11. The BER performance of three coupling coefficients

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307

Fig. 13. RTL schematic of binary chirp modulator.

Fig. 11. BER for varying the coupling coefficients.

Fig. 14. Modulator parameters at clock rate of 20 ns and a real chirp signal.
Fig. 12. Experimental system.

are reported when the chirp signal uses the spectral band of 69
KHz.

TABLE II
TRANSMITTER AND RECEIVER COMPONENTS

V. HARDWARE IMPLEMENTATION
MI communication using chirp signals is implemented in
two parts for separating the design and verification. The digital
design contains the internal chip modulator while the analog
design includes a digital-to-analog (DAC), class A amplifier
and MI models. Fig. 12 displays our prototype board and
measurement setup with an embedded development platform
Xilinx Spartan 3 [32], [33].
A. Implemented FPGA Modulator
The chirp binary modulator is developed by VHDL and its
implementation in a FPGA. The software program uses the ISE
project navigator in conjunction with the ISE simulator to provide the verification of the design. The RTL schematic of the
modulator contains the Digital Clock Manager (DCM), the internal data_gen, chirp generator and the DAC controller block
as in Fig. 13. Four programs are coded separately according to
these four blocks. The DCM block generates the 100 MHz fast
sampling clock from the 50 MHz external clock. An internal
random binary number is generated from an N stage shift register. Inside the BPSK block, a look-up-table for the chirp signal
is created. The wideband chirp signal is calculated with the design based on the odd and even frequencies of a single transmitter-receiver, since its separation band is wider than others.
The design used 58 of the 12000 slice register, 14% of the
LUT and 8 input-output pins of the FPGA. The synthesis and
behavior of the design are provided in Fig. 14. The dac_cs,
dac_clr, spi_clk and spi_mosi signals are the SPI controller interface to DAC chip in analog part. The data_in is a 12-bit unsigned digital value, which equivalents the chirp signal. Fig. 14
shows that at the active low of the dac_cs, the modulator transmits data on the spi_mosi signal and DAC captures this input
data on the rising edge of the spi_clk clock signal. Each data
value, for example number 4095 in Fig. 14, takes 64 clock cycles of the spi_clk. For a given chirp signal, there are 1024 data

Fig. 15. Class A amplifier at transmitter and receiver circuit. Hardware boards
are in Fig. 12.

points in the LUT. Therefore, the chirp duration is 660 . Further details of the SPI bus timing and controller protocol can be
found in [32]. Moreover, the experimental results in Section VI
have clearly demonstrated and validated the proof of concept
for chirp modulator and MI multi-channel communications.
B. Antenna Design
The transmitter and receiver antennas are required to have
a high quality factor (Q) at the particular frequency of interest.
For this reason, large inductances and low loss resistances of the
antennas are needed, since the effective Q of the coils is presented as
. Consequently, single layer circular air cored
coils are created. The enameled copper wire 100 AWG with a
width of 0.8 mm is hand wound with 25 turns and a diameter of
8 cm. Table II shows the component values of the antennas in
the transmitters and receivers.
C. DAC and Class A Amplifier
The on-board four channel DAC LTC2624 is used to convert
a 12 bit unsigned decimal value from the digital part into the

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Fig. 16. (a) is 1Tx-2Rx and (b) is 2Tx-1R. Chirp modulated signal is from 20 KHz to 89 KHz.

69 KHz band of chirp signals. These signals are formed as the

modulated signals and sent to an amplifier as in Fig. 15. Class
A amplifier is basically known as a common emitter amplifier
with a transformer coupled load. Theoretically, the power efficiency of a class A stage can be increased to 50%. Fig. 15 shows
the schematics and the chosen components of the proposed amplifier in the one channel of transmitter and receiver circuits.
Four power amplifiers are built to connect to four channels of
the on-board DAC devices (see Fig. 12). It can be seen that low
cost BJT 2N3904 are used for class A power amplifiers with 200
variable common emitter resistances. The transmitters and receivers are changed to LC tanks for better compensation of the
delivered power to the load, resulting in a low lossless and high
quality factor of these circuits.
VI. EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION AND RESULTS
The binary phase shift modulation based on FPGA for the
one transmitter and two receivers and the two transmitters and
one receiver models is implemented for investigating the effect
of SIMO and MISO respectively. A snapshot of the main signals measured from the TDS 2024B oscilloscope is shown in
Fig. 16. The transmitted data stream 1011 in 1Tx-2Rx model
and 0010 in 2Tx-1Rx model are at the top square waves. The
transmitter signals with the modulated carrier are illustrated in
the second waveform (Tx) in Fig. 16(a) and the second and the
third waveform (Tx1 and Tx2) in Fig. 16(b). We can see that the
chirp signals are swapped by 180 phase according to the binary
data. The Rx1 and Rx2 signals in Fig. 16(a) and the Rx1 signal
in Fig. 16(b) are the captured received signals at the loads of
both models. Fig. 16 shows the two envelope peaks at two frequencies in both models when distances (d1 and d2) between the
second coil and the first/third coil are both 4 cm. It is noted that
the frequency responses of these envelopes are demonstrated in

Section III. The last waveforms in Fig. 16 are the receiver data
using the demodulator block (Fig. 10) in Section IV. Although,
our models work at strong coupling coefficients, the receiver
voltage still receives only one envelope in the case of weak coupling at distances of 10 cm. In other words, the same system can
be used in weak coupling applications.
Table III shows the comparison between recent published
modulation scheme results in a near field, and our design. Characteristics of the modulation schemes in the SISO system can
be found in [17], [35]. It is observed that most of these designs
are based on a single band of the carrier resonant frequency, instead of the wideband carrier in our system. The system capacity
for our design can be estimated using the Shannons equation
. Where
is the bandwidth of the channel. The theoretical maximum system capacity
is determined by the signal and the noise power in the channel.
With coding, a greater capacity can be achieved. A practical capacity of each channel using the above equation and
is 69 Kbps per split frequency mode. Thus, with the two split
frequencies 138 Kbps is obtained. More split frequency modes
result to multi-channel data rates, a significant improvement
on single resonant schemes in current literature. Additionally,
our proposed design can be applied for a higher frequency as
shown in Section III and mathematical equation in Section II.
At any resonant frequency, the proportion of
is a unit-free
value. In simulation, we have also performed at the frequency
from 5 MHz to 55 MHz. The approach for this 50 MHz spectral band is similar to that of the 69 KHz band. Therefore, the
capacity is yielded as 50 Mbps of each channel per split frequency mode. In our implementation, the system capacity per
channel is limited by the ability of the Spartan-III FPGA to provide the required clock frequency and a slew rate of 0.8
in the on-board DAC chip. With a higher specification FPGA

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TABLE III
MODULATION COMPARISON

development board, higher system capacity could be achieved.

However, this is beyond the scope of this paper and this issue
does not affect the concept of our proposed design.
Furthermore, the variation of frequencies based on the effect of magnetic interference between the transmitters and/or
receivers has not been considered by researches with the detail
provided in Table III. Our system additionally provides multicarrier design and variable distance between the transmitters
and receivers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first
chirp modulation scheme of MI communication used for multiple transmitters and multiple receivers with a variable distance.
VII. CONCLUSIONS
We have presented a comprehensive frequency splitting
theory in inductive communication systems. We have also
demonstrated through a practical hardware design the possibility of multiple mode inductive communication systems using
the strength of the flux couplings in inductive communication.
An FPGA-based implementation is presented to validate the
theory and design. The system uses few discrete devices and
one FPGA chip, which can be integrated into new silicon
devices. The hardware results are supported by the theoretical
simulations. The new modulation technique based on chirp
excitation to spread the data and binary phase change is implemented for near field inductive communication. The chirp
signal shows that MIMO systems can be excited from a carrier
chirp source. This could lead to multiple data transmissions
across inductive communication systems.
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Hoang Nguyen received the M.E. degree in communication from La Trobe University, Melbourne,
Australia, in 2003, where he is currently working
toward the Ph.D. degree in electronics and communication engineering. From 2003 to 2011, he
worked at Vietnam Telecom International where
he was a project manager participating in design,
development and implement of VoIP network, VSAT
network, contact centre, voice, Internet, VPN, Lease
line, video conferencing, mobile trunking over
VSAT Network, signaling transfer protocol and Next

Generation Network. His current research interests include wireless power

transfer, near field communication, body area network, and internet of things.

Johnson I. Agbinya is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic engineering

at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. He
is also Honorary Professor at the University of
Witwatersrand (WITS), South Africa; Extraordinary
Professor at the University of the Western Cape
(UWC), Cape Town and the Tshwane University
of Technology (TUT), Pretoria, South Africa.
Prior to joining La Trobe University in November
2011, he was Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO
Telecommunications and Industrial Physics (now
CSIRO ICT) from 19932000, Principal Research Engineering at Vodafone
Australia (20002003) and Senior Lecturer at UTS Australia (20032011). His
R&D activities cover remote sensing, Internet of things (machine to machine
communications), bio-monitoring systems, wireless power transfer, mobile
communications and biometrics systems. He has authored/co-author nine books
in telecommunications, some of which are used as textbooks. He is founder of
the International Conference on Broadband Communications and Biomedical
Applications (IB2COM), Pan African Conference on Science, Computing
and Telecommunications (PACT) and the African Journal of Information and
Communication Technology (AJICT).

John Devlin has a degree in electrical engineering

from the University of Melbourne, Australia, in
1974 and a Ph.D. degree in space physics from La
Trobe University, Bundoora, Australia, in 1978. His
current position is Tad Szental Chair in Electronic
and Communication Science, La Trobe University.
He has spent many years in the area of electronic
instrumentation (embedded microcontrol and microelectronics), with applications in signal processing,
remote sensing satellites, the automotive industry
and radar systems, particularly HF radar. Current
research interests include motor control for electric vehicle drive trains, vision
systems for driver support (speed, and other, sign recognition), voice enhancement in noisy (automotive) environments, and the TIGER radar where a new
generation fully digital radar that will enhance signal detection and flexibility,
has been developed for deployment within the SuperDARN community.