Suppression of Leakage Magnetic Field from a

Wireless Power Transfer System using

Ferrimagnetic Material and Metallic Shielding
Hongseok Kim #1, Jonghyun Cho *2, Seungyoung Ahn ##3, Jonghoon Kim *4, Joungho Kim *5
#
Division of Future Vehicle, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
##
Cho-Chun-Shik Graduate School for Green Transportation, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
*
Department of Electrical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
373-1 Guseong-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, KOREA
1
kimhongseok@kaist.ac.kr

Abstract—This paper describes a method to suppress the

leakage magnetic field from a wireless power transfer (WPT)
system through the use of a ferrimagnetic material and metallic
shielding. To demonstrate the advantages of the coil structure
with the ferrimagnetic material and metallic shielding, magnetic
field distributions and the electrical performance of three
different coil structures are investigated via 3D electromagnetic
(EM) field solver and SPICE simulation. Results show that the
suggested method considerably reduces the leakage magnetic
field in the vicinity of the WPT system without significant loss of
electrical performance. The simulation results of the suggested
coil structure are experimentally verified with a 100 W-class
WPT system for an LED TV.

I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless power transfer (WPT) is fundamentally based on
Faraday’s law of induction which is a basic law of
electromagnetism relating to the operating principles of
transformers, inductors, and electrical generators. Utilizing
WPT technology, the required power for a specific load can
be transferred across relatively large air gap without any
physical contact, so that the operation in wet and dusty
environments yields no safety or reliability problems [1].
Today, WPT technology has been used for a variety of
applications, such as the capsule endoscopy, the radio
frequency identification (RFID), the factory automation (FA),
and the battery charger for electric vehicles (EVs) or mobile
electronics. In particular, a great deal of research has recently
been carried out to bring enhanced mobility to mobile
electronics and electric vehicles [1]-[4]. However, the human
exposure to time-varying electromagnetic fields (EMFs) will
be increased with the amount of usage of WPT technology, Fig. 1. A prototype of the WPT system powering up a 32 inch LED TV
since it is accompanied by the time-varying EMFs which are
relatively intense. While the immunity of electronic biological effects of exposure to time-varying EMFs have
equipment against time-varying EMFs can be enhanced by been reviewed by the International Commission on Non-
reinforcing the electromagnetic shielding in the individual Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), the International
devices, the human body can’t avoid the direct exposure to the Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the World Health
time-varying EMFs. Organization (WHO), and the other national expert groups.
The human exposure to time-varying EMFs results in Evidence of the acute effects of human exposure to time-
internal electric fields and in body currents and energy varying EMFs has thus been well established [6], [7]. On this
absorption in tissues, and the nervous system can account, in order to facilitate application to the consumer
consequently be stimulated depending on the coupling electronics and the EV charging equipment, a WPT system
mechanisms and the frequency involved. The related should comply with relevant guidelines.

978-1-4673-2060-3/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE 640

 C2 L22
C1  (2)
L1L2  M 2
where C1 is the capacitance of the capacitor connected in
series with the primary coil, C2 is the capacitance of the
capacitor connected in parallel with the secondary coil, and ω0
is the resonant frequency measured in radians per second. In
Fig. 2 (a) and (c), RC1 and RC2 are the ESR of the capacitors.
(a) To convert high-frequency AC to DC, and minimize the
ripple voltage at the load, a full-bridge rectifier with a
capacitor is used, and consequently, the nonlinearity is
introduced due to diodes in the rectifier. But if an LED TV
dissipates some constant power, this active load can be
assumed as the passive resistive load RDC, and the equivalent
input impedance RAC in Fig. 2 (b), which will dissipate the
same amount of AC power as DC power in RDC, is then [9]
(b)
RDC
R AC  (3)
2
Using Equation (3), the nonlinearity arising from the
rectifier can be omitted. Hence, the WPT system can be
simplified into a linear equivalent circuit using phasor
representation as shown in Fig. 2 (c).

III. COIL STRUCTURES FOR WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER

(c)
Fig. 3 depicts 3D drawings of three kinds of coil structures
Fig. 2. (a) The simplified equivalent circuit of a WPT system for an LED TV, for a WPT system. The ordinary circular loop coils shown in
(b) the equivalent input impedance representation of the full-bridge rectifier
with capacitor and, (c) the linear equivalent circuit in the frequency domain
Fig. 3 (a) are only composed of wires. The primary coil has
for a WPT system excited by the constant AC current source. the geometric mean radius of 115 mm and 10 turns of Litz
wire made with 600 strands of American-wire-gauge (AWG)
The purpose of this study is to investigate how the 36 wire, and the secondary coil has the geometric mean radius
ferrimagnetic material and metallic shielding affect the of 115 mm and 9 turns of the same Litz wire. While this type
magnetic field distribution around a WPT system. Meanwhile, of loop coils has been generally used for WPT, measurement
the accompanying effects of shielding materials on the of the human exposure level of the magnetic field near the
electrical performance of a WPT system are considered. WPT system has rarely been conducted.
The coil structure shown in Fig. 3 (b) has ferrite cores.
II. WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER SYSTEM FOR AN LED TV
Ferrimagnetic material, which has high relative permeability,
Fig. 2 (a) shows a simplified equivalent circuit of a WPT can confine and guide magnetic flux. Guiding the magnetic
system for an LED TV. At the power supply, commercial flux along the desired path can increase the mutual inductance
electricity is converted into AC current with higher frequency and self-inductances of magnetically coupled coils and
to generate high-frequency magnetic field around the primary eventually reduce the leakage magnetic field around magnetic
coil. Following the power supply is a set of 2 magnetically sources [4], [5], [10]. With its advantages, ferrimagnetic
coupled coils with an air gap of 200mm. The self-inductances materials also have the eddy current losses and hysteresis
of the two coils are labelled L1 and L2, respectively, and RL1 losses which depend on the operating frequency and the
and RL2 stand for the effective series resistance (ESR) of the intensity of magnetic field. With a less lossy material such as
coils, and The mutual inductance is labelled M. In this system, ferrite, eddy current losses can be neglected if the frequency
capacitors with ESR are attached to each coil for utilization of below several tens of kilohertz is used and hysteresis losses
electromagnetic resonance, the purpose of which is to can be minimized if the magnetic field intensity is controlled
minimize the magnitude of reactance and maximize the power to be in linear region of B vs. H curve [5], [11]. Although
transfer capability between coupled coils [1], [8]. In this study, there are numerous possibilities regarding the shape and the
the inductive reactance of each coil is compensated with series dimensions of the ferrite cores, a rectangular configuration is a
and parallel resonance topology whose approximate values simple and easily available shape. In this study, therefore,
can be determined by the following equations [1]. rectangular ferrite tiles are used in the construction and those
1 have the following dimensions: 100 mmL × 100 mmW (or 50
C2  2 (1) mmW) × 5 mmT. L is the acronym of “Length.” W is that of
0 L2 “Width.” T is that of “Thickness.”

641
 is not placed very close to the coils, the variation of circuit
parameters can be reduced significantly. For the simulation,
30 kHz is used as the operating frequency, and the
conductivity of aluminum is 3.82 × 107 S/m. Thus, the skin
depth of aluminum at this frequency is 0.4714 mm. Although
the thickness of aluminum shielding need not be larger than
the skin depth, easily available thickness in the market was
chosen for the simulation and experimental verification.
Therefore, the metallic shielding has the following
(a)
dimensions: 510 mmL × 300 mmW × 45 mmH × 5 mmT.
Due to the structural complexity of the coil structures
except a pair of circular loop coils, finding the analytical
solutions for the electrical characteristics may be cumbersome
or impractical. Thus, the electrical characteristics of the coil
structures are extracted by the 3D EM field solver, ANSYS
MAXWELL and presented in Table I. k is the coupling
coefficient between the magnetically coupled coils.
TABLE I
ELECTRICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COIL STRUCTURES

Without With
With
Ferrite and Ferrite and
(b) Ferrite
Metallic Shielding Metallic Shielding
L1 51.01 μH 74.16 μH 70.44 μH
RL1 18.71 mΩ 18.74 mΩ 19.78 mΩ
L2 41.93 μH 60.50 μH 57.51 μH
RL2 16.84 mΩ 16.85 mΩ 17.69 mΩ
k 0.0381 0.0641 0.0462
TABLE II
COMMON SYSTEM PARAMETERS FOR SIMULATIONS

System Parameter Value

(c)
Fig. 3. Perspectives of (a) a pair of circular loop coils without ferrite and
metallic shielding, (b) a pair of circular loop coils with ferrite, and (c) a pair
of circular loop coils with ferrite and metallic shielding.
To investigate the effects of metallic shielding on the
magnetic field distribution and the electrical performance of a
WPT system, metallic shielding made of aluminum is placed
around the ferrite cores, as shown in Fig. 3 (c). Within a
conductive material exposed to a time-varying magnetic field,
electric currents are induced due to variation of the field with
time. These circulating eddies of current have inductance and
induce magnetic fields. These fields cancel the incident
magnetic fields penetrating the material, and so the net
magnetic field in the vicinity of the material is reduced [4], [5],
[12]. To use metals for suppression of leakage magnetic field
from a WPT system, its effects on the electrical performance
of a WPT system should be considered. Geselowitz et al. [12]
theoretically and experimentally shows that the metals in the
vicinity of the coils cause the decrease of self and mutual
inductances and increase of the ESR of the coils, but if metal
Operating Frequency 30 kHz
Load Voltage 170 V
Load Power 75 W
Equivalent DC Load, RDC 385.33 Ω
Equivalent AC Load, RAC 192.67 Ω
ESR of the Capacitors, RC1 and RC2 20 mΩ
IV. ANALYSIS OF MAGNETIC FIELD DISTRIBUTIONS
In this chapter, the magnetic field distributions of the coil
structures for a WPT system presented in Chapter III are
investigated using 3D EM field solver and SPICE simulation.
To demonstrate the differences in the magnetic field
distributions, the simulations are performed under common
condition shown in Table II. The condition of the same load
power (i.e. the dissipated powers in the load are identical in
three cases.) is reasonable, since the purpose of this study is to
investigate how the shielding materials as the part of a WPT
system affect the magnetic field distribution in the vicinity of
a WPT system other than the shielding effectiveness of the
materials themselves.
Since the self-inductances and the coupling coefficient k
vary with the coil structures, as shown in Table I, the primary

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 TABLE III
CIRCUIT SIMULATION RESULTS

Without With
Ferrite and With Ferrite and
Metallic Ferrite Metallic
Shielding Shielding
I1 16.62 Arms 9.28 Arms 12.97 Arms
I2 15.25 Arms 10.56 Arms 11.11 Arms
Transfer
79.6 % 91.0 % 86.9 %
efficiency

(a) current I1, the secondary current I2, and the transfer efficiency
also vary with the coil structure, as shown in Table III. From
Table III, it is found that the transfer efficiency of the coil
structure with ferrite and metallic shielding is high and
comparable to that of the coil structure with ferrite.
Fig. 4 illustrates the magnetic flux density distributions on
XZ plane which show the root mean square (RMS) magnitude
of the phasor field (i.e. time-harmonic form) of the magnetic
flux density. To visualize the differences in the magnetic flux
density distribution more clearly, the maximum limits of the
color maps in Fig. 4 are identically defined as 500 μT. Careful
examination of the magnetic field distribution shown in Fig. 4
(a) reveals that the magnetic flux density is strong near the
coils and significantly reduced as the distance from a set of 2
(b)
coupled coils increases. Looking at Fig. 4 (b) and (c), there are
clear differences in the magnetic field distributions. The
magnetic flux density directly above and below the ferrites
and aluminum plates is significantly lower due to guiding and
shielding effects on the magnetic field provided by the ferrite
and metallic shielding. However, along the X axis, where
humans watching TV are usually located, the differences in
magnetic flux density are subtle. Thus, in order to numerically
compare the differences in the magnetic flux density, the
simulated results along the measurement line, whose
configuration is shown in Fig. 5, are shown in Fig. 6 with
human exposure limits published by ICNIRP [6], [7].
The graphed contour shown in Fig. 6 clearly illustrates the
(c) differences in each magnetic flux density distribution. In
Fig. 4. Magnetic field distributions on XZ plane simulated under the condition particular, in the range above 200 mm from the center of the
of constant load power, (a) without ferrite and metallic shielding, (b) with coils, it is seen that the rates of decrease vary considerably
ferrite, and (c) with ferrite and metallic shielding. with the coil structure. In the case of the loop coils without
ferrite and metallic shielding, the stricter human exposure
limit, 6.25 μT, is observed at a distance of 545 mm from the
center of the coils. However, in the case of the coil structure
with ferrite and metallic shielding, this limit is observed at a
distance of 440 mm from the center of the coils
The slopes in the distance range over 200 mm in Fig. 6
show linearity in a logarithmic scale. Thus, these slopes can
be distinctly characterized by a decibel scale. The unit of
dBμA/m is commonly used as the EMC unit to express the
magnitude of the radiated magnetic field intensity, and is
defined as [5]

 dBA / m ≡ 20 log10  A / m   

Fig. 5. Measurement line located midway between a pair of magnetically  1A / m 
coupled coils.  

643
 and the magnetic field intensity, H, is measured in amperes
per meter (A/m). Using equations (4) and (5), the simulated
data can be translated to the standard EMC unit of dBμA/m.
Therefore, the regression models, which have information of
the slopes on a decibel scale, can be obtained as shown in Fig.
7 and Table IV. From the Table IV, it is found that the
magnetic flux density from the coil structure with ferrite and
metallic shielding decreases most rapidly at a rate of -75.1
dB/decade on a decibel scale. This characteristic (i.e. larger
decreasing rate) can be more effective for the WPT system for
high-power application like the electric vehicle battery
charging system. Additionally, the rate of decrease can be
used as the criteria for the comparison of EMC performance
between the WPT systems different from each other, since it
is independent of the magnitude of the fields at a specific
location.
Fig. 6. Magnetic flux density (RMS value) simulated under the condition of V. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND RESULTS
constant load power.
On the basis of the simulation setup and results reported in
the previous chapter, a prototype consisting of coil structure
with ferrite and metallic shielding was built. All of the
materials, dimensions and configuration are the same as the
simulation setup. The measurement results of the circuital
parameters were in excellent agreement and listed with the
simulation results in Table V.
TABLE V
COMPARISON OF THE SIMULATION AND THE MEASUREMENT

Simulation Measurement

L1 70.44 μH 66.43 μH
RL1 19.78 mΩ 26.42 mΩ
L2 57.51 μH 51.37 μH
RL2 17.69 mΩ 27.23 mΩ
k 0.0462 0.0422
Operating Frequency 30.0 kHz 30.2 kHz
I1 12.97 Arms 13.15 Arms
I2 11.11 Arms 14.02 Arms
Fig. 7. Curve fitting models for the simulated data of magnetic flux density.

TABLE IV The measurements of the magnetic field were performed to

RATE OF DECREASE WITH DISTANCE FROM THE WPT SYSTEM investigate the leakage magnetic field in front of the prototype
Without With system, which transfers 76.8 W across an air gap of 200 mm
Ferrite and With Ferrite and with the coils centered. The measurement setup including the
Metallic Ferrite Metallic prototype of the WPT system for a 32 inch LED TV is shown
Shielding Shielding in Fig. 8. Measurements were taken with a Narda EHP-200
Rate of electric and magnetic field analyzer along the measurement
Decrease -54.82 -60.32 -75.10 line shown in Fig. 5, where the possibility for human exposure
(dB/decade) to the time-varying EMFs is greatest. The measured and
simulated results along this line are shown in Fig. 9, with
human exposure limits plotted. The difference between the
The magnetic flux density B in free space is defined as [5]
simulation results and measurements is 10 % at most. The
magnetic flux density is 27.0 μT at a distance 167 mm from the
 B = μ0 H  
front edge of the metallic shielding, or 317 mm from the center
of the coils. The 6.25 μT limit is reached at 304 mm from the
where B is measured in Tesla (T), the constant μ0 is the edge of the metallic shielding or 454 mm from the center of the
permeability of free space which is almost equal to that of air, coils.

644

Fig. 8. Setup for measurement of magnetic flux density in front of the WPT
system for an LED TV transferring average power of 76.8 W.
Fig. 9. Measurement results of the magnetic flux density compared with the
simulation results.
VI. CONCLUSION
In order to ensure that WPT systems are convenient to use
and safely approachable, it is critical that the systems comply
with the relevant regulations without significant loss of
electrical performance. The simulation and measurement
results shown here demonstrate that a coil structure with ferrite
and metallic shielding is a viable solution. With this coil
structure, it was shown that the magnetic field intensity
decreases most rapidly at a rate of -75.1 dB/decade on a
645
decibel scale with almost the same efficiency as the coil
structure with ferrite only. These can be more useful
characteristics for the WPT system for high-power application
(e.g. EV charger.)
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by a National Research
Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean
government (MEST) (No.2012-0000990 / No.2010-0029179).
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