Improving the Efficiency of Wireless Power

Transfer Systems Using Metamaterials

Yan Zhao and Varut Vutipongsatorn
International School of Engineering
Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University
Phayathai Road, Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330, Thailand
Email: yan.z@chula.ac.th
Ekachai Leelarasmee
Department of Electrical Engineering
Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University
Phayathai Road, Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330, Thailand
Email: ekachai.l@chula.ac.th

AbstractThe investigation of applying metamaterials in the op

efficiency enhancement for wireless power transfer (WPT) sys- g Lo
tems is presented in this paper. Three types of metamaterials are ceivin
considered: the double negative material (DNG), the isotropic - Re
negative material (IMNG), and the anisotropic -negative mate-
rial (AMNG). Through the transmission analysis, it is found that op
Lo
evanescent wave components are amplified by the metamaterial ting Cs
slabs, and the amplification is the highest for AMNG due to the n s mit Cp
presence of resonances. Numerical simulations show that a three- Tra
fold enhancement in efficiency can be achieved when an AMNG d Por
slab is used in the WPT system. t2
r
Cs
I. I NTRODUCTION Cp rial
ate
e tam b
Efficient transfer and usage of energy have always been Por M Sla
t1
popular research topics in both academia and industry. Re-
cently, the development of wireless power transfer (WPT)
technologies has attracted considerable attention due to the Fig. 1. Simulation setup for a wireless power transfer system.
convenience such technology may bring to our daily lives.
Although the original idea was demonstrated more than 100
years ago by Tesla [1], its application has become more property of metamaterials is essential in the amplification of
popular recently due to the reduction in energy consumption evanescent waves and improvement of WPT efficiency.
of electronic devices.
Most existing and commercially available WPT systems are II. W IRELESS P OWER T RANSFER THROUGH I NDUCTIVE
based on the method of inductive coupling, which requires C OUPLING
a close proximity between the user device and the charging
A typical WPT system using inductive coupling contains
station in order to avoid energy loss over a long distance.
two loop antennas: one for transmitting, and the other for
Thus it is a major drawback of such systems. For energy
receiving, as shown in Fig. 1. In our design, the operating
transfer over a long distance, the conventional method of
frequency is 27 MHz and electrically small transmitting and
microwave power transmission [2] is a viable solution to
receiving loop antennas are used. Electrically small loop
provide high transfer efficiency, however the large antenna
antennas are highly inductive, thus to match their impedance
size (1 km diameter) and the large amount of power used in
to 50 , it is necessary to design a matching network.
transmission bring inconvenience to their daily use and may
Figure 2 shows the equivalent circuit of the loop antenna
cause hazardous health effect to human beings. In 2007, a
and a simple matching network consisting two capacitors. The
more efficient WPT scheme of resonant coupling has been
capacitance values of Cs and Cp can be calculated through the
proposed and experimentally demonstrated [3].
following steps. First the impedance of the loop antenna can
In this paper, we propose to apply the so-called metamate-
be calculated as
rials [4], which are artificial structures with extraordinary and
desirable electromagnetic properties, to improve the efficiency ZL = RL + jXL = (Rrad + Rloss ) + jXL , (1)
of WPT systems. Although the design of WPT systems using
metamaterials has also been investigated by other researchers where Rrad is the radiation resistance, Rloss is the loss
[5], [6], [7], from our work, it is found that the anisotropic resistance, and XL is the inductive reactance of the loop. The
978-1-4799-0545-4/13/$31.00 2013
c IEEE capacitors Cs and Cp are used to tune the impedance of the
 Rloss 0
S11
Cs -5 S 21
R rad
Cp Z in = 50 W -10

Amplitude (dB)
L ZL
-15

Loop antenna Matching network -20

Fig. 2. Equivalent circuit and matching network for an electrically small loop
antenna. -25

loop antenna, Zin , which can be calculated as -30

26.65 26.7 26.75 26.8
1
Zin = Rin + jXin = jXs + . (2) Frequency (MHz)
j 1
+
Xp RL + jXL Fig. 3. Calculated S-parameters for the WPT system shown in Fig. 1 when
no metamaterial slabs are placed between the loop antennas.
After simple manipulations, to match Zin to 50 , the follow-
ing expressions for the real and imaginary parts of Zin should Source plane x Destination plane
be satisfied:
Xp2 RL y
Rin = 2 = 50, (3)
(Xp XL ) + RL 2
y=L
XL Xp2 XL2 Xp Xp RL
2
Xin = 2 Xs = 0. (4) Metamaterial slab
(Xp XL ) + RL
2
d
In our design, the radius of the loop antenna is r = 20 cm,
Fig. 4. System configuration for the analysis if plane-wave transmission
and the diameter of the wire is 1.59 cm. Then the values of RL through metamaterial slabs.
and XL can be estimated as: RL = 0.06 , XL = 140.3 [8],
and the values of Xs and Xp are calculated as: Xp = 145.3
and Xs = 4049.8 , which correspond to Cp = 40.6 pF and are mainly concerned with how the magnetic field component
Cs = 1.5 pF. is affected by the metamaterial, the original problem can be
The WPT system shown in Fig. 1 (without the metamaterial reduced to the two-dimensional (2-D) transverse electric (TE)
slab) is simulated using the full-wave finite element method case (with respect to the material interface). Hence only three
and the calculated S-parameters are shown in Fig. 3. The field components are non-zero: Hx , Hy , and Ez , which can
distance between two loops antennas is d = 3 m. It can be seen be expressed for different regions:
that the antennas are well matched at around 26.7 MHz but jk y
e y + Rejky y , y < 0,
the values of S21 are very low even at the resonant frequency, jkx x
Aejqy y + Bejqy y , 0 < y < L, (5)
Ez = E0 e
which is due to the large spacing between the loops. As a jky (yL)
Te , y > L,
result, the peak power transfer efficiency is only a few percent.
In the following, we show that the efficiency can be enhanced where E0 is the magnitude of the incidence wave, kx and
by placing a metamaterial slab between the loop antennas. ky are wave numbers along x- and y-directions in free-space,
respectively, qy is the wave number along y-direction inside
III. A MPLIFICATION OF E VANESCENT WAVES BY the metamaterial slab, R and T are reflection and transmission
M ETAMATERIAL S LABS coefficients, and A and B are the amplitudes of waves inside
In the present work, three types of metamaterials are con- the metamaterial traveling in forward and backward directions,
sidered: the double negative material (DNG, = = 1), the respectively. By matching boundary conditions at y = 0
isotropic -negative material (IMNG, = 1, = 1), and the and y = L such that tangential electrical and magnetic
anisotropic -negative material (AMNG, = x = 1, y = field components are continuous (also applying Maxwells
1). Before applying these materials in WPT systems, it is equations), the transmission coefficient can be calculated as
necessary to investigate how plane-waves are affected when 2qy ky
transmitted through them. Figure 5 shows the system configu- T = . (6)
2qy ky cos(qy L) j(qy2 + ky2 ) sin(qy L)
ration used to calculate different transmission coefficients. The
metamaterial slab is infinite in both x- and z-directions, and Note that the above transmission coefficient is calculated from
its planar boundaries are perpendicular to y-direction. As we the front to the back interface of the metamaterial slab. Thus
 30
20
Transmission coefficient, |T| (dB)
10
0
-10
-20
-30
-40
0 1
Fig. 5. Comparison of transmission coefficient for different metamaterial
slabs. The free-space case is also shown as a reference.
the total transmission coefficient taking into account the wave
propagation (and decay for evanescent wave components) in
the free-space region outside the metamaterial slab is then
2qy ky ejky (dL)
T =
2qy ky cos(qy L) j(qy2 + ky2 ) sin(qy L)
For isotropic metamaterials = = 1 and = 1, =
1, qy can be calculated as
qy = k02 kx2 , (8)
where k0 is the free-space wave number. For anisotropic
metamaterial = x = 1, y = 1, qy is given by
k2
qy = k02 x , (9)
y
Figure 5 shows the calculated transmission coefficient for
the above three types of metamaterials, as well as for the free-
space case when no metamaterials are present between the
loop antennas. The thickness of the slabs is L = 0.6 m, and the
distance between the source and destination planes is d = 3 m.
In the calculations, a small amount of loss (tan = 0.01) for
negative material parameters is also included to characterize
realistic metamaterials. It can be seen that for the free-space
case, the higher the value of the wave number kx , the faster
the wave decays. For the case of DNG, the wave decays in
a much slower rate, especially for larger wave numbers. This
is because the evanescent wave components (for kx > k0 )
are amplified when propagating inside the DNG, which is
also the case for the IMNG and AMNG, as shown in Fig. 5.
However, for IMNG and AMNG, a resonance occurs for kx
just above k0 , and another resonance is also present for AMNG
at about kx = 4.4k0 . In fact the amplification of evanescent
wave components is essential in the efficiency enhancement of
WPT systems, and it can be predicted from the comparison in
Fig. 5 that the AMNG slab may provide a better performance.
16
Freespace Freespace
= = -1 - 0.01j 14 = = -1 - 0.01j
= 1, = -1 - 0.01j = 1, = -1 - 0.01j
= 1, x = 1, y = -1 - 0.01j 12 = 1, x = 1,
y = -1 - 0.01j
Efficiency (%)
10
8
6
4
2
0
2 3 4 5 26.65 26.7 26.75 26.8
k x /k 0 Frequency (MHz)
Fig. 6. Comparison of the efficiency for different WPT systems with different
types of metamaterial slabs. The free-space case is also shown as a reference.
IV. E NHANCEMENT OF W IRELESS P OWER T RANSFER
U SING M ETAMATERIALS
All the above three types of metamaterials have been
applied to investigate the efficiency enhancement of the WPT
. (7)
system shown in Fig. 1. The overall system efficiency can
be approximated as |S21 |2 . Figure 6 shows the comparison
of the efficiency for different WPT system configurations
from numerical simulations, in which the distance between
the loop antenna is kept unchanged, i.e. d = 3 m, and the
thickness of the metamaterial slabs is L = 0.6 m. It is
clear that all metamaterial slabs contribute to the enhancement
of system efficiency, comparing to the free-space case. The
DNG and IMNG slabs provide similar improvement since their
transmission coefficients are also similar, which means that
the resonance at about kx = 1.1k0 does not offer significant
advantage in amplification of evanescent waves. Nonetheless,
the efficiency of the WPT systems using DNG and IMNG
is almost double that of the free-space case. For the case
of the AMNG slab, the resonance at higher wave numbers
helps improve the system efficiency by nearly three times. The
results demonstrate that the anisotropy of negative material
parameters in metamaterials is essential in the efficiency
enhancement for WPT systems.
For illustration purposes, the calculated magnetic field dis-
tributions for the WPT systems with and without the AMNG
slab are plotted and shown in Fig. 7. It can be seen that for the
free-space case, only a small fraction of the magnetic field is
coupled to the receiving loop, thus the system efficiency is low.
On the other hand, when the AMNG slab is placed between the
loop antennas, evanescent waves are amplified inside the slab
and then further coupled to the receiving loop, contributing to
a significant enhancement of the system efficiency.
For WPT systems, it is often useful to investigate how
the system efficiency varies with distance. Figure 8 shows a
comparison of system efficiency at different distances (sepa-
 Receiving loop positive effect. When the distance is small, although the
AMNG slab amplifies evanescent waves, the mutual coupling
affects the impedance matching of the loop antennas and
decrease their efficiency. As a result, the improvement of
overall system efficiency is less significant.
V. C ONCLUSION
In conclusion, an investigation of efficiency enhancement
for WPT systems using metamaterials is presented in this
paper. Using plane-wave analysis, it is found that evanescent
= 1, x = 1, waves can be amplified the most when anisotropy of negative
y = -1 - 0.01j material parameters is present in metamaterials, which is
essential in the efficiency improvement for WPT systems. Nu-
merical simulations show that comparing to the conventional
y
WPT system, the system using metamaterials has a much
x higher efficiency, and the efficiency enhancement using the
Transmitting loop
AMNG slab is nearly three times. Further work may include
Fig. 7. Comparison of magnetic field distributions for WPT systems with the realization of metamaterials using split-ring resonators
and without the AMNG slab. (SRRs) [9], as well as the investigation of how different system
parameters such as the thickness of the metamterial slab, affect
35 the performance of the metamaterial-enhanced WPT systems.
Without the AMNG slab
With the AMNG slab
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
30
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support
25 by The Thailand Research Fund (TRF) Ref. MRG5580226.
Efficiency (%)

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20
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peak efficiency when two loop antennas are placed in close
proximity is about 27%, which agrees well with theoretical
prediction as the analytically calculated efficiency of each loop
antenna is around 50% [8]. When the distance between two
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between the loop antennas is large. This is due to the fact that
at larger distances, the coupling between loop antennas and the
AMNG slab is negligible and the AMNG slab only introduces