Coil design for wireless power transfer and communication over hinges of smart glasses

Abstract

Glasses are a suitable platform for embedding sensors and displays around our heads to support our daily lives. Furthermore, aesthetic features, durability, and portability are essential properties of glasses. However, designing such smart glasses is challenging, because connecting different glass frames both mechanically and electrically, result in smart glasses with bulky hinges. To overcome this challenge, we propose a new design to embed inductively coupled coil pairs adjacent to glasses hinges to deliver power and data wirelessly to the frames. Positioning the coils next to the hinges creates sufficient area for a large transmission and reception coil while maintaining the utility of the glasses. Consequently, we were able to achieve over 85% power efficiency and a communication rate of 50 Mbps between coils that are small enough to be embedded inside the frame of conventional glasses, available on the market.