Demonstration of 15% Efficient Optical Wireless Power Transmission Over 1 km With Atmospheric Turbulence

ABSTRACT Optical wireless power transmission has attracted attention in recent years, and improvement of efficiency has become an important issue. In this paper, we demonstrate a highly efficient energy transmission system under strong atmospheric turbulence. A diffractive optical element integrated in the transmitter and a homogenizer implemented before photovoltaic (PV) panel in the receiver were employed to uniformise the beam intensity distribution. Further, the output current extracted via silicon PV, which fluctuates due to turbulence, was smoothed using capacitors mounted on the PV panel. Transmission efficiency of 15% was achieved in which the laser beam of the optical power of 1035 W was transmitted for 1 km under strong turbulence and converted to electric power of 152 W.