A Novel Architecture of Retro-Reflective Beamforming for Wireless Power Transmission With a 2-D Transmitting Antenna Array Controlled by 1-D Receiving Antenna Arrays

A novel architecture of retro-reflective beamforming is proposed for wireless power transmission applications. In contrast to a conventional retro-reflective beamformer with a 2-D transmitting antenna array controlled by a 2-D receiving antenna array, the novel retro-reflective beamformer includes a 2-D transmitting antenna array controlled by multiple 1-D receiving antenna arrays. Compared with the conventional architecture of retro-reflective beamforming, the architecture proposed in this communication has better flexibility and lower complexity. Numerical results indicate that the wireless power transmission efficiency of the novel architecture has little difference from that of the conventional architecture when the location of a wireless power receiver with a clear line-of-sight path is not far off the broadside direction of the retro-reflective beamformer. Some preliminary experiments are conducted in an anechoic chamber as well as an indoor environment to verify the numerical studies. The experimental data are in agreement with the numerical results.