CAREER: Toward a wireless power transfer system: high-frequency power electronics

The modern electronic systems have been transforming rapidly to realize automation, such as automation in factories or warehouses and autonomous vehicles. As demand for automation grows, enabling technologies such as artificial intelligence, control, and smart charging systems become beneficial. However, while other technologies have been considerably revolutionized, the effort to develop a smart and efficient charging system for automation has not.

Power electronics is a critical technology in the charging system to convert electric energy into a different level or type to deliver it to an electric load, such as batteries. Therefore, it must tackle the key challenges that prevent us from obtaining a smart, compact, and efficient charging system. As an effort to overcome the challenges, wireless power transfer technology has been explored to reduce the charging error and remove manual intervention to charge their batteries.

It can eliminate heavy wire cables, connectors, and power plug failure resulting from dust, dirt, and other environmental factors. Moreover, the autonomous driving technology makes this technology beneficial because they can go to the charging station when their batteries run out. However, current power converters for wireless power transfer are limited in maximizing performance because of the available technologies and designs.

This proposed research aims to develop a high-frequency power converter to miniaturize a wireless power transfer system efficiently and investigate pioneering charging methodologies for battery-powered vehicles. This research will accelerate advances in various applications such as transportation electrification and renewable energy technologies by improving the battery charging methodology.

Broader transformative impacts are also anticipated from the proposed research into undergraduate and graduate curricula and the involvement of undergraduate and underrepresented students in research. Also, outreach to K-12 students and local industries will be pursued to introduce wireless power transfer and power-electronic circuits and ensure the broad transformative impact of the research activities.

This project aims to investigate new design techniques to improve power density and performance of power electronics while studying innovative approaches that enhance the charging ability in the WPT system. The research will be performed through the intertwined thrusts that involve: i) designing and implementing a high-frequency resonant converter with magnetic resonant coupling coils to increase power density efficiently, ii) investigating a bidirectional wireless power transfer system using self-synchronous rectification and control system to provide Vehicle-to-Grid capability, and iii) exploring advanced wireless power transfer charging approaches such as vehicle-to-vehicle and dynamic charging to reduce the charging time by diversifying the charging methods.

The dependence of the circuit performance on the switching devices, magnetic designs, gate drive circuitry, and compensation network topology will be explored in detail. The PI will simulate the proposed system in the multiphysics software to evaluate human exposure to electromagnetic fields due to high-power operation at high frequencies. Also, multiple coil structure will be studied to reduce the leakage fields and minimize the expensive and lossy shields.

Successful project completion is anticipated to expand the operating range and power level of power-electronic circuits for wireless power transfer systems using novel charging approaches.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.