A Novel Switched Capacitor‐Based Stacked Transmitter Coil Structure for Constant Wireless Charging of On‐Road Vehicles

ABSTRACT The integration of wireless power transfer (WPT) and intelligent autopilot technology offers a promising and viable solution for seamless en‐route charging of unmanned mobile devices. It is critical to ensure efficient and stable output power transfer along a predetermined line path, in conjunction with a lightweight and general receiver. This involves considering the compatibility of the receiver‐side coil structure and keeping the circuitry as simple and essential as possible. In this article, we propose a new stacked transmitter coil (STC) design with switched capacitors (SCs) that integrates an in‐plane misalignment‐tolerant coil array in the first layer with a considerable power transfer capacity of a circular coil in the secondary layer. The mismatch of this new structure is a one‐dimensional mismatch that provides enhanced disorder tolerance while maintaining high energy transfer efficiency, which does not require stacking of the receiving‐end coil. Consequently, for a conventional circular receiver coil, output power fluctuations are significantly reduced for 1‐D linear movements along the transmitter using switching control. Our experimental setup enables constant energy transfer efficiency of around 80%, which is achieved by solely relying on the transmitter's voltage information for switching control.