Sensors and Actuators A 92 (2001) 305311

Wireless energy transfer for stand-alone systems: a comparison between low and high power applicability
G. Vandevoorde*, R. Puers
K.U. Leuven ESAT-MICAS, Kard. Mercierlaan 94, 3001 Heverlee, Belgium Accepted 24 November 2000

Abstract The applicability of micro-systems, designed to contain monitoring or actuating devices is often hampered by accessibility. For systems with low power demands, the use of inductive links for wireless energy and data transfer to the remote system is a widely acknowledged solution. Design strategies that optimise towards power transfer efciency for given geometric constraints, have been proposed. With the introduction of more power consuming components, such as small dc motors, in micro-systems, a demand was created for inductive links with high power transfer possibilities combined with a high overall efciency. This paper describes the design considerations for such high energy inductive links. An inductive link is presented, capable of transferring 20 W of power over a distance of 1 cm with an overall efciency of 80%. In addition, ongoing developments will be outlined, such as data-transmission and external voltage regulation. # 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.
Keywords: Inductive links; Telemetry; Wireless power transfer

1. Introduction In the eld of medical implants, two magnetically coupled coils are often used as a means of power and data-transmission to the implant [14]. For these applications, constraints on sizing and distance often impose limits on the amount of transferable power to a few milliwatts. However, in other elds or applications, size constraints can be less imposing on the coil geometries, enabling a power transfer of several watts. The ability to send larger amounts of power, can lead to the implementation of more power consuming components in a remote system such as micro-motors or high bandwidth data-transmitters. This paper will outline the problem areas of high power inductive links. It will start with a discussion on the major differences between low power and high power inductive links. Next, a realised circuit will be presented that is able to transfer up to 20 W of power over a distance of 1 cm with an overall efciency of 80%. To integrate this system into a stand-alone system, future developments are needed and their current status will be given.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 32-16-32-1077; fax: 32-16-32-1975; URL: http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/micas. E-mail addresses: glenn.vandevoorde@esat.kuleuven.ac.be (G. Vandevoorde), robert.puers@esat.kuleuven.ac.be (R. Puers).

2. Inductive links: low power versus high power The rst developed inductive links are situated in the early 1960s, with main applications the powering of auditory prostheses and articial heart systems. Such a link is basically a dcdc converter built around a loosely coupled transformer (Fig. 1). A high frequent coil driver delivers a large ac current to the primary coil, generating a magnetic ux. This ux is partially capted by the secondary coil, hereby, inducing a current. After rectication, the voltage regulator ensures a constant output voltage in spite of variations in coupling factor or power drain. Today, two application elds can be distinguished: low power magnetic links and high power magnetic links. Low power magnetic links are characterised by very unfavourable coil coupling conditions either caused by a large coil separation or a very small internal coil diameter. The coupling factor can be lower than 1% and can vary over a decade in a very unpredictable matter due to coil misalignments. The limiting factor in the overall power transfer efciency for these devices is therefore the coupling or link efciency. For high power links, coupling factors can easily reach up to 30%. Since these systems usually consist in larger coil dimension, closely coupled, the link efciency can go up to 96%. Therefore, more importance is given to the optimisation of the efciency of the total secondary circuit,

0924-4247/01/$ see front matter # 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. PII: S 0 9 2 4 - 4 2 4 7 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 5 8 8 - X

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Fig. 1. Schematic overview of a typical inductive link system.

such as the rectier and voltage regulator, instead of optimising the link efciency. The design of low and high power inductive links put their emphasis on different aspects, although their principle of operation remains the same. The notation of components used further in this text are given in Fig. 2. 2.1. Secondary tank resonance A rst difference can be seen in the conguration of the secondary circuit. In inductive link design, a capacitor is added either in series or in parallel with the secondary coil. The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly, as the resonant capacitor cancels the impedance of the secondary coil, the load seen by the primary driver is purely resistive. Secondly, it can be shown that using either series or parallel resonance achieves an optimal coupling efciency [5]. The choice between series or parallel connection depends on the value of the internal load Rdc for which an optimal link efciency is reached. The total link efciency for a parallel resonant secondary can be written as [5] k2 Q1 Q2 Z 1 Q2 =a k2 Q1 Q2 a 1=Q2 while for a series resonant secondary, the efficiency is given by k2 Q1 a Z 1 k2 Q1 1=Q2 a 1=Q2

Fig. 2. Definition of components and constants used throughout this text.

In both equations, Q1 and Q2 are, respectively, the quality factor of the primary and secondary coil and k the coupling factor. The unitless constant adefined as a oC2RL, where o the angular operating frequency, C2 the impedance of the resonant capacitor, and Rac represents the internal load. Fig. 3 shows the link efficiency versus a. As can be seen from Fig. 3, the series and parallel connection both reach the same value for the optimal efficiency, but this at very different values for a. For low power links, the choice between series or parallel connection will be determined by practical considerations regarding the secondary coil inductance and the impedance of the resonant capacitor. Fig. 3 also gives the range of values for the impedance of L2 and C2 to reach the optimal efciency for a transfer frequency between 10 kHz and 1 MHz. A power transfer of 25 mW at a voltage of 5 V is assumed, with a coupling factor of 1% and Q1 Q2 100. As can be seen, the series resonance case needs values for L2 which are impossible to attain practically as low power links are typically characterised by the limited diameter of the internal coil. The reason for this extreme high coil values, results from the voltage drop over the resonant series capacitor. To compensate for this voltage drop, a much higher induced secondary

Fig. 3. Efficiency vs. a for a typical low power magnetic link (specifications given in table) with series or parallel resonant secondary.

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Fig. 4. Efficiency vs. a for a typical high power magnetic link (specifications given in table) with series or parallel resonant secondary.

voltage is needed, which can only be accomplished by increasing the inductance of the secondary coil. Therefore, low power links opt for a parallel capacitor, making the secondary LC tank behave as a voltage source. For high power coupling, Fig. 4 shows again that both series and parallel congurations reach the same maximal efciency for different values of a. However, in this case the difference between aopt for series and parallel resonance is much smaller than in the case of low coupling factors. Both resonance schemes could therefore be implemented from an efciency and practical point of view. However, parallel and series resonant tanks have different output characteristics. In the parallel case a voltage source type output is obtained while a series resonant tank behaves as a current source. For rectication of the secondary power signal, a current source type is preferred as the output network of a class E driver is current driven. As this type of driver is most applied, almost all high power magnetic links implement a series resonant secondary. 2.2. Optimisation towards maximal efficiency In order to achieve maximal efciency for low power links, the secondary coil and capacitor are matched to the internal load. Starting from the value of the internal load and a realistic assumption of the quality factors of the primary and secondary coil Q1 and Q2, the optimal value for a can be derived as Q2 aopt p 1X p 1X aopt Q2 for parallel resonance for series resonance

From the value of aopt, the secondary inductance and capacitance can be derived after choosing an acceptable operating frequency ! aopt RL L2 for parallel resonance o a2 1 opt L2 C2 RL oaopt aopt oRL for series resonance for parallel and series resonance

where X k2 Q1Q2. The maximal efficiency for both series and parallel resonance is then given by Zm X p 2 1 1 X

Based on these values, and iteration process will start to come to a complete secondary design. More details on this iteration process can be found in [5]. Although this design strategy leads to optimal total efficiencies for low power links, it cannot be directly implemented for high power links. The main reason can be attributed to the fact that the link efficiency is the limiting factor for low power links in attaining a good total power transfer efficiency. The looses in the secondary circuit can almost be neglected compared to the losses caused by the weak coil coupling. One should therefore optimise the link efficiency as it is the highest loss factor in the total system. For high power links, this is not the case. The internal voltage regulator and the rectier represent losses which are much higher than the losses caused by a non-ideal coupling between internal and external coil. Only optimising the link efciency while ignoring the other secondary losses, will therefore not lead to a maximal power transfer efciency. Instead, great effort is put in minimising the secondary losses. This is mainly accomplished by eliminating the use of an internal voltage regulator which represent power losses of approximately 10%. Therefore, the internal voltage is kept constant in spite of load variations by properly designing the secondary tank. A variation in coupling factor is then compensated for by using an available data-telemetry channel to recalibrate the primary coil driver (see also Section 4). Moreover, the nature of the applications for which high power links are developed cannot be overlooked. In contrast to low power implants, these high power

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applications are characterised by a large variation in power drain. When, e.g. recharging of a high energy density battery is considered, power demands can vary from a few watts up to 20 W, depending on the state of charge of this battery. For articial heart systems or implantable blood perfusion pumps, the power demand will highly depend on the hydraulic output of the system. As the optimal link efciency is reached by matching L2 and C2 to a certain load, a change in power consumption inevitably leads to an operating point for which the link efciency is not optimal anymore. The larger the variation, the less sense it makes to only accentuate the optimisation of the link efciency. Therefore, it can be concluded that the secondary tank will be determined by the losses in the secondary circuit and not by aopt as is the case in low power links. 2.3. Rectifier topologies High frequent rectiers have two loss contributions associated with the diodes, losses due to its forward conduction and a high frequent loss that can be attributed to the nite switching time of the diode. The switching losses occur as a consequence of the reverse recovery time of the diode. High power rectiers are more sensitive to this loss as they increase drastically with higher average forward currents. However, they can be eliminated by using Schottky diodes. The forward conduction losses exist of the loss by the forward voltage of the diode and the loss associated with its non-zero series resistance. In low power rectiers, the former will contribute most to the overall rectier loss. The latter gains signicance in high power rectiers as these losses increase quadratically with the average forward current of the diode. For low power applications, several rectier topologies can be implemented [4]. Each topology will transform the dc-load at their output to another equivalent load Rac at their input. It is this equivalent load that will determine the impedance of the secondary coil through the optimal design strategy (Section 2.2). In order to reach a practical implementation of this secondary coil, it can be necessary to adjust the equivalent load Rac by selecting a different rectier topology. Another important aspect in selecting the proper topology, is the voltage drop over the rectier. The limited diameter of the secondary coil and the poor coupling factor, make it difcult in most applications to induce a high secondary voltage Vac. For this reason, fullwave rectiers with voltage doubling are often preferred and full-bridge rectiers are not readily implemented in low power links. The choice of the proper rectier topology will be primarily based on the load adjustment and voltage drop, while the rectier efciency only plays a secondary role. On the contrary, and as explained in Section 2.2, the design strategy for optimal link efciency is not implemented for high power inductive links. As a consequence, load adjustment by choosing different topologies does not occur. Also the voltage drop over the rectier plays an insignicant role as the high coupling factor allows for high secondary

voltages. It can therefore be concluded that for high power rectiers, only the efciency is important. This implies that only full-wave, full-bridge rectiers are implemented for high power applications. Another reason for the use of fullbridge rectiers is that they represent a symmetric load. Half-bridge rectiers typically direct the current to the load for half a period. The other half, the current is diverted by a free wheeling diode. This asymmetric load will represent a change in external equivalent load. For low power applications, this can hardly be felt by the driver circuit due to the extremely low coupling. For high power links, this effect will cause a sudden change in the load network within one single switching period. It is impossible to compensate for this faulty behaviour as it is very unpredictable and is accompanied by large current surges and voltage spikes. With respect to the current type output of the primary coil driver, current driven rectier topologies are implemented. 2.4. Link driver aspects The internal load Rac can be transformed to an equivalent series resistance Req for a certain coupling factor k. This equivalent resistance represents the resistive fraction of the output impedance seen by the primary coil driver. Due to the high frequent nature of the coil driver, switching amplier topologies, such as class C, class D or class E are implemented. They are characterised by ideal efciencies of 100%, but are very sensitive to a change in the impedance of their output network [6]. A change in internal load, either by a change in power drain or a change in coupling factor k, will therefore represent a change in equivalent series resistance seen by the primary coil. This will lead to faulty operation of the driver. As a result, more switching losses occur in the active switch of the driver. Therefore, closedloop drivers are developed which adjust their input frequency and/or duty cycle in order to compensate for changes in the output load. Due to the poor magnetic coupling in low power magnetic links, the equivalent series resistance is so small that the driver can hardly feel its presence. A change in power drain or coupling factor will have no effect on the drivers operating regime. In some applications, closed-loop drivers are implemented if a large variation of the output impedance occurs, e.g. when the external coil is exible. Apart from this special case, no attention is given to closedloop operation of the driver for low power applications. For high power links, closed-loop operation becomes more important. The relatively large currents present in these applications lead to a large power dissipation in the active switch in case faulty driver behaviour occurs. These high power switching losses not only reduce the lifetime of the switch but can result in complete circuit failure. The impact of the switching losses on the overall power transfer efciency is also much larger compared to low power applications. As the efciency of all building blocks of the inductive link are comparable, a mere 5% driver loss might make it the weakest component in the system. This is no concern for low

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power links as here the limiting factor in overall efciency is the link efciency going as low as a few percent. It can be understood that in this case, the driver efciency plays an insignicant role. As a conclusion, the closed-loop behaviour of the primary coil driver is an essential aspect of high power inductive links for reliable and efcient operation. It will be further discussed in Section 3. 3. Closed-loop link drivers To generate a large ac current in the primary coil, class C or class E resonant converters are most commonly used. The switching behaviour of these converters ensures that in no case the active device will conduct current when there is a voltage present over its terminals and vice versa (Fig. 5). This gives a theoretical efciency of 100%. The correct operation of these converters highly depends on the load network connected to the active device. Any change in coil coupling factor or power drain results in a change in equivalent resistance seen at the primary. Due to this resulting variation in output load, the power converter will be forced out of its ideal regime leading to high switching losses. It is therefore necessary to include a feedback loop within the converter, such that its operating regime is tuned to the actual load. Several schemes have been proposed in the past and a more detailed discussion can be found [6]. Although changes in the load network can be compensated by using internal feedback schemes [6], it is important to reduce these switching losses as faulty closure will appear before it is corrected by the feedback mechanism. In this respect, class E drivers are far more superior than class C drivers.
Fig. 6. Load independent primary coil driver. A class E circuit topology is implemented, both the driver operates in class C regime.

For the class E driver, the voltage over the primary coil is decoupled from the switch voltage. For the same required primary coil voltage, an eventual mistiming in switch closure will result in lower losses as the switch voltage for the class E driver will be lower (Fig. 5). Moreover, this driver type shows an inherent insensitivity to timing errors as the transistor voltage and its derivative are zero at switch closure. However, for closed-loop class E operation, both the frequency and the duty cycle of the drivers input have to be adjusted. Changing the frequency will detune the internal circuitry, such that it no longer operates under series resonance. This will inevitably lower the total link efciency of the system. The developed system implemented a closed-loop class CE driver. It combines the advantages of the class E circuit topology with a less elaborate control feedback circuitry. Moreover, as only the duty cycle needs to be adjusted for correct operation, the secondary circuit will remain in series resonance and optimal link efciency is guaranteed. The principle of operation is depicted in Fig. 6. The operation of the circuit can be seen as follows. At start-up, the input signal of the driver is provided by a relaxation oscillator generating a xed frequency square wave with a duty cycle of 50%. Once the drivers transient behaviour is gone, the duty cycle of the input signal is adjusted according to the measured voltage over the active switch. When the transistor voltage reaches zero, the switch is closed. The re-opening of the switch is determined by the relaxation oscillator. In the developed circuit, this technique ensures a correct operation for power variations from 0 to 20 W and coil coupling factor variations ranging from 0 to 0.5. This circuit has been realised (Fig. 7). An overall power transfer efciency of 80% was accomplished. The diameter of both external and remote coil was limited to 6 cm, while their thickness is no more than 2 mm. 4. Secondary voltage regulation Beside the effect on the power converters operating regime, a variation in power drain or coupling factor also leads to a change in induced voltage on the secondary coil and hence a change in secondary supply voltage. Although, the use of an internal voltage regulator would allow for this change, it must

Fig. 5. (a) and (b) represent the class C and class E circuit diagrams. Graphs (c) and (d) represent the voltage and current waveforms.

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Fig. 7. A picture of the developed closed-loop driver.

be noticed that such devices have efciencies in the order of 90% and will cause high losses in the secondary circuit. A rst approach is to incorporate an external voltage regulation scheme, eliminating the use of a classic internal voltageregulator (Fig.8).Basically, the internalsupplyvoltage is measured and broadcasted to the external supply, which will adjust its output level to meet the required secondary supply voltage. In this approach, the data communication channel is almost fully used for voltage regulation. A second approach, currently under construction, compensates for changes in power drain by a proper selection of the internal coil and resonant capacitor; their values are calculated based on the allowable voltage variation within the total power range. For a given coupling factor k and an allowable relative variation Da of the induced secondary voltage over the entire power range, the values for the secondary coil and series resonant capacitor can be determined L2 Rac oa and a C2 ! oRac

where a is given by s k4 1 Da2 a 1 1 Da2 A more detailed discussion of this technique is on its way. Using this technique, the internal voltage can be kept fairly constant despite of rapid variations in power drain. Variations in coupling factor, which occur at a much slower rate, are compensated using the available data-telemetry channel for recalibration every few minutes. The main advantage of this technique is that the data-channel is not used full-time for voltage regulation and can still be used to monitor the remote system. 5. Ongoing developments Currently, additional work is put in realising a halfduplex, bi-directional optical data-transmission channel for biomedical applications. Also two micro-controllers will

Fig. 8. External voltage regulation scheme for constant secondary supply voltage. The internal voltage is broadcasted to the external driver to adjust its output.

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Acknowledgements This research was supported by the ESPRIT III program of the European Community project no. 21245. References
[1] K. Van Schuylenbergh, R. Puers, Monitoring orthopaedic implants using active telemetry, in: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on IEEE EMBS, Paris, France, 1992, pp. 26722673. [2] P.R. Troyk, M.A. Schwan, Closed-loop class E transcutaneous power and data link for microimplants, IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng. ED-39 (1996) 708714. [3] R. Puers, M. Catrysse, G. Vandevoorde, R.J. Collier, E. Louridas, F. Burny, M. Donckerwolcke, F. Moulart, A telemetry system for the detection of hip prosthesis loosening by vibration analysis, in: Proceedings of the Eurosensors XIII, The Hague, The Netherlands, 1999, pp. 757760. [4] B. Ziaie, K. Najafi, D. Anderson, A low-power miniature transmitter using a low-loss silicon platform for biotelemetry, in: Proceedings of the IEEE/EMBS, Chicago, USA, 1997, pp. 22212224. [5] K. Van Schuylenbergh, Optimisation of inductive powering of small biotelemetry implants, PhD thesis, May 1998, K.U. Leuven ESATMICAS, Leuven, Belgium. [6] G. Vandevoorde, M. Catrysse, R. Puers, G. Beale, P. Smith, A. Sangster, Development of a transcutaneous energy and data-transmission system for high power applications upto 20 W, in: Proceedings of the Biotelemetry XV, Juneau, AK, 1999, pp. 5657.

Fig. 9. The system currently under development will implement an external micro-controller for external voltage regulation.

be implemented. The external micro-controller is in charge of the output calibration and control of the external voltage regulator. It can also communicate with a possible external battery pack that is equipped with state-of-the-art SMB bus technology. The internal micro-controller will perform battery management tasks and data encoding/decoding. The operating principle of this system, depicted in Fig. 9, is as follows. On start-up, a small amount of power is transferred. During this time, the internal circuit will broadcast the induced voltage to the external micro-controller. The output power of the driver is then slowly adjusted until the required internal supply voltage is reached. At this moment, the voltage over the primary coil is stored. The micro-controller will keep this voltage constant by regulating the voltage supply in case an internal power drain variation occurs. After this calibration, the data channel is open to both the receive and the transmit mode. Every few minutes, a command will be send by the external microcontroller and a recalibration of the driver output will occur to compensate for possible coil misalignments due to, e.g. movement artefacts. 6. Conclusions Although, inductive links are widely used for low power biomedical applications, this paper clearly describes that the design strategies for low power links cannot be applied for the development of high power inductive links. In high power links, closed-loop operation of the driver is a necessity for power efcient operation. The importance of external voltage regulation and proper magnetic design has been outlined. A core link driver was developed, able to transfer 20 W of power over a distance of 1 cm with an overall efciency of 80%. Both the external and the remote coil have diameters of 6 cm and a thickness of 2 mm. Further developments are currently taking place in order to integrate this core link driver into biomedical, industrial, and automotive applications.

Biographies
Robert Puers was born in Antwerpen, Belgium in 1953. He received his BS degree in electrical engineering in Gent in 1974, and his MS degree at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium in 1977, where he obtained his PhD in 1986. He is Professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and is director of the clean room facilities for silicon wafer processing and for hybrid circuit technology at the ESAT-MICAS laboratories of the same University. Since 1987 he is establishing a group working on mechanical sensors and silicon micro-machining, and on packaging techniques, for biomedical implant systems as well as for high performant industrial devices. In addition, his general interest is in low power telemetry systems, with the emphasis on intelligent interface circuits and inductive power and data links. He is involved in the organisation, reviewing and publishing activities of many conferences, journals and workshops in the field of biotelemetry, sensors, actuators, micro-machining and micro-systems. Professor Puers is teaching courses in `Production Techniques for Electronic Circuit Manufacturing', and in `Biomedical Instrumentation and Stimulation'. He is the author of more than 200 papers on biotelemetry, sensors or packaging in journals or international conferences. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE.), council member of the International Micro-electronics and Packaging Society (IMAPS) and member of the Electron Device Society (EDS) and many others. Glenn Vandevoorde was born in Oostende, Belgium, in 1973. He received his MS degree in electrical engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium in June 1996. He joined ESAT-MICAS, K.U. Leuven in August 1996 and is currently, working on his PhD in electrical engineering. His research interests are mainly inductive powering for high energy implants, medical packaging, protection for implantable batteries, and biotelemetry in general.