Modeling and Design of a Wireless Power Transfer Cell

with Planar Spiral Structures

Xiu Zhang, S. L. Ho, W. N. Fu

Department of Electrical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
09901605r@polyu.edu.hk

Abstract—As an emerging technology of wireless power
transfer, an electromagnetic resonant coupling technique, also
known as witricity, has been widely discussed. In this paper, a
prototype with square planar spiral structure based on witricity
is proposed. To compute the resonant frequency, an equivalent
circuit model is presented. The inductance is calculated based on
Wheeler formula. The accuracy of the equivalent circuit model is
verified both experimentally and numerically using Ansoft HFSS
which is a three-dimensional (3-D) finite element (FE) software.
The developed equivalent model is used to optimize the design of
the coils to realize resonance at the lowest resonanting frequency.
I. INTRODUCTION
Since the invention of the Tesla coil in the early twentieth
century, many attempts have been made to improve the
technology of wireless power transfer. Essentially, wireless
power transfer requires three main elements: large air gaps,
high efficiency and high power. Witricity is a new technology
of electro-magnetic resonant coupling which satisfies the
afore-mentioned requirements for transmitting power over a
Fig.1(a) and its equivalent circuit is shown in Fig.1(b). The
inductance of the square spiral is computed using the Wheeler
formula [2]:
n 2 (d out + din )
Lmw = K1m0 (1)
2(1 + K 2 r )
where; n is the number of turns; m0 is the permeability of free
space; K1 and K 2 are coefficients depending on the shapes of
the coils, e.g. they are 2.34 and 2.75, respectively for coils
having a square shape; r is the fill ratio, defined as
r = (d out - din ) /(d out + d in ) , where din and d out are,
respectively, the inner and outer diameter of the inductor.
The capacitance can be obtained from the well-known
formula e S / d , where e is the permittivity, S is the area, and
d is the distance between the two sheets of copper.
The resonant frequencies of the transmitting coil and
receiving coil are computed according to the equivalent circuit.
ZL ZL ZL ZL

mid-range distance based on strongly coupled magnetic ZC ZC ZC ZC

resonance [1]. The research team at MIT presents a

ZL ZL ZL ZL

ZC

quantitative model describing the power transfer mechanism ZC ZC ZC

and they have successfully transferred 60 W of power over ZL ZL ZL ZL

distances in excess of two meters with efficiencies up to 40%. ZC ZC ZC ZC

Nowadays, many microelectronic devices are implanted

within human body. Hitherto, replacement of implanted
batteries poses a major health risk. To address such
shortcomings and use a technique along the direction of
witricity, the research team in the University of Pittsburgh has
proposed a Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) system to
demonstrate the feasibility of transmitting power to
implantable devices or sensors.
In this paper, an equivalent circuit of the prototype is
presented, and the resonant frequency of the system is
computed according to the circuit. The developed model is
applied to design the WPT system to i) optimize the resonant
frequency which is dependent on the shapes and sizes of the
prototypes, and ii) reduce the electromagnetic pollutions to the
environment.
II. DESIGN AND METHOD
The basic witricity system consists of two resonators, the
source and device, a driving loop, and an output loop.
Research findings indicate that planar spiral inductors have a
limited Q value, but the inductances are well-defined over a
broad range of process variations [2].
With the proposed design, a square spiral inductance is
placed on a thin plastic lamella. The wider copper sheets are
stuck onto the other side to form capacitors as shown in
(a) (b)
Fig. 1. (a) The construction of the cell. (b) The equivalent circuit.
III. RESULT
With the prototype in Fig. 1(a), it is found experimentally
that the resonating wireless power transfer occurs at about 5.9
MHz. The effective voltage is 5V and the effective current is
about 0.15-0.2 A. As the transmitted power is sufficient to
light up an LED (0.2W-0.8W), the efficiency is estimated to
be at least 20%. The prototype is also simulated using Ansoft
HFSS. The results of the developed equivalent circuit, HFSS
and experiment are consistent with each other.
In order to apply witricity to different situations, the driving
loop and the output loop should be designed with different
sizes with the same resonant frequency and obviously it is
more efficient to simulate and optimize the system using
equivalent circuits rather than 3-D FE method.
IV. REFERENCES
[1] A. Kurs, A. Karalis, R. Moffatt, J. D. Joannopoulos, P. Fisher, and M.
Soljacic, “Wireless power transfer via strongly coupled magnetic
resonances,” Science, Vol. 317, pp. 83-86, July 2007.
[2] Sunderarajan S. Mohan, Maria del Mar Hershenson, Stephen P.Boyd
and Thomas H. Lee, “Simple accurate expressions for planar spiral
inductances,” IEEE Journal of Solid Solid-State Circuit, Vol. 34, No.
10, pp.1419-1424, October 1999.

978-1-4244-7062-4/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE

Authorized licensed use limited to: Staffordshire University. Downloaded on July 13,2010 at 20:47:13 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.