Demo: 3-D wireless charging for indoor electronics using multimode quasistatic cavity resonators

Abstract

Most existing wireless power transfer (WPT) solutions are limited to 2-D configurations, which limits mobility when charging electronics. What is needed are 3-D WPT, which can deliver power anywhere in large volumes (e.g., factories, rooms, toolbox, etc). WPT using quasistatic cavity resonators (QSCR) proposed a route towards truly ubiquitous WPT, which safely charges devices as they enter a WPT enabled space. However, several drawbacks exist to this approach such as the need for a central pole and the spatially non-uniform power availability. To address these issues, we demonstrate a WPT system based on “multimode” QSCR [4]; this structure possess two resonant modes: pole dependent (PD) mode, which resembles the previous QSCR work and pole independent (PI) mode, which works whether or not the pole exist. This structure enables two operations: (i) pole-less operation, which works to the same degree as the previous QSCR without the central pole and (ii) dual-mode operation, which although requires the central pole, enables high-efficiency WPT all over the volume.