IEEE POWER ELECTRONICS LETTERS, VOL. 1, NO.
2, JUNE 2003
DC Analysis Technique for Inductive
Power Transfer Pick-Ups
John T. Boys, Grant A. Covic, Member, IEEE, and Yongxiang Xu
Abstract—Inductively coupled power transfer (ICPT) systems
are now being used in applications where their efficiency and
stability are critically important. In this paper, an ICPT pick-up is
analyzed under conditions where the pick-up tuning is assumed to
be essentially perfect, and all diodes are assumed to have continuous
current flow in them. The analysis proceeds by replacing the
existing parallel resonant tank and rectifier circuit with a dc source
and transformer equivalent, thereby reducing the complexity of the
circuit, and eliminating the diodes. The dc equivalent is shown to
have the same energy storage and power capability as the original
circuit and is accurate under all loadings for both transient and
steady-state conditions. With this simplification, analytic transfer
functions for the pick-up with respect to its excitation current and
its control switch duty cycle are developed. The ICPT system model
is shown to have multiple poles, with complex zeroes on the right half
plane. The model allows a sophisticated controller to be designed to
give the ICPT system the required stability at high efficiency.
Index Terms—Control systems, electromagnetic induction,
power control, state space systems.
I. INTRODUCTION
I NDUCTIVELY coupled power transfer (ICPT) systems are
becoming increasingly popular in clean rooms and other
materials handling applications where high reliability and
residue-free operation within exacting or harsh environments
may be necessary. ICPT systems use a magnetic field at VLF
frequencies (typically 5–50 kHz) to transfer power from a static
power supply to one or more movable pick-ups, without physical
contact, across relatively large air gaps [1]–[3]. In these stringent
environments optimizing, the performance of the ICPT system
with respect to efficiency and stability is essential but difficult
given the system complexity. This paper develops an analytical
technique where the order of the system is reduced allowing
new and improved controllers to be developed.
A typical ICPT system combines a loosely coupled primary
and secondary, similar to a conventional transformer. The
primary consists of a power supply that produces an essentially
constant sinusoidal current in an extended loop or charging
coil with inductance . The power pickup and pickup regu-
lator forms the secondary. Voltage (and power) is magnetically
coupled via the mutual coupling between the primary loop and
the pick-up (M) directly into the pick-up as shown in Fig. 1. In
order to improve the power transfer characteristics, the pick-up
coil inductance is invariably tuned, with a compensation
Manuscript received July 3, 2003; revised August 25, 2003. Recommended
by Associate Editor D. Perreault.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engi-
neering, School of Engineering, The University of Auckland, Auckland 1001,
New Zealand (e-mail: ga.covic@auckland.ac.nz).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LPEL.2003.819909
1540-7985/03$17.00 © 2003 IEEE
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51
Fig. 1. Parallel tuned pick-up circuit for ICPT systems.
capacitor , to the loop current frequency , however
such tuning increases the system order (the number of poles
and zeros). The loaded Q of this tuned circuit determines the
maximum electrical power that can be transferred. Controlled
lower power flows may be achieved using the switch-mode
controller circuit that comprises switch (S), a dc inductor ,
a load capacitor , and an equivalent load resistor (R).
When the switch is controlled on, it essentially decouples the
pick-up coil, so that in the fully decoupled state no power is
transferred to it from the loop and electrically the system acts
as though the pick-up coil is “not there” [3].
Because ICPT systems are relatively new, there remains
significant theoretical work to be undertaken to understand
sufficiently the system dynamics and interactions in order to de-
termine the simplest and/or lowest cost solutions for regulation
and control of pick-up power. The output voltage of the pick-up
is determined by the amplitude of voltage resonance within
the tank, but its dynamics in conjunction with the dc inductor
determine the system poles and zeros of the circuit and must be
known for the correct design of any control circuit. Conventional
methodologies for determining an analytical solution that accu-
rately describe the complete circuit dynamics, e.g., generalized
state space averaging [4], are intractable because of the complex
interactions of the high order resonant circuit with the switching
dynamics of the control circuit under transient conditions.
Where solutions are possible, these require careful interpretation
in order to extract and understand the inherent characteristics of
the circuit. Consequently a technique that enables the complex
ac resonant system to be reduced to a much simpler dc equivalent
where power flow is more easily analyzed is desirable.
II. DC EQUIVALENT SOURCE
The pick-up can be analyzed as though the operation was at dc
providing; the Q of the tuned circuit is assumed to be sufficiently
high such that there is no sudden change in the stored resonant
energy in less than a half a cycle, the energy injected into the
system is equal to the energy generated from the system, the dc
currents to the load are considered continuous, and the system
frequency stays essentially constant at the resonant frequency.
52 IEEE POWER ELECTRONICS LETTERS, VOL. 1, NO. 2, JUNE 2003

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 2. Equivalent ac and dc models of a parallel resonant tank.

Fig. 3. Equivalent dc circuit of a parallel tuned pick-up.

In order to produce a valid dc equivalent, the resonant tank

driven from an ac voltage source is replaced by an equivalent dc
source and capacitor. This is achieved in a two-step process as
shown in Fig. 2. In the first step a well-known Thevenin to Norton
transformation is used to convert the ac voltage to an ac current
source. The open-circuit voltage of the pick-up is given by
(1)
With the pick-up placed in a consistent position relative to
the primary loop, M can be considered constant, and therefore
(a) (b)
the steady state value of is also essentially constant. The
value of the ac (short circuit) current source in the Norton equiv- Fig. 4. Comparison of circuit operation of Figs. 2(a), (b), and (c). (a) Envelope
alent of Fig. 2(b), is given by this voltage source limited by the of ac resonant voltages and dc capacitor voltage. (b) Stored energy in the ac
resonant circuits & dc capacitor.
impedance of the secondary winding. Thus

(2)

In the second step shown in Fig. 2(c), the circuit of Fig. 2(b) is
replaced by a dc current source shunted by a dc capacitor (with
value equal to the resonant tank capacitor) that is required to pro-
vide the energy storage. The principles governing the conversion
are conservation of energy and power. The stored energy in the
ac system is “ ,” where is the
peak capacitor voltage. The DC energy stored is where
is the dc voltage across the capacitor. For equality therefore,
. Similarly in the ac system with perfect tuning the
power flow to the energy store is (ignoring the fluc-
tuating power flow at double frequency) while in the dc circuit
it is , so that for equality of power flow Fig. 5. Output voltage response of Figs. 1 and 3 at start-up with fixed duty
cycle.
(3)
Using (4), the output voltage to a dc inductive load is
The resonant tank of a typical ICPT system operates between times the “transformer” turns ratio. For the dc system an ideal
10–50 kHz, thus a dc model of the peak voltage envelope is suf- dc:dc transformer must be attached to the circuit of Fig. 2(c). If
ficiently accurate for control purposes provided the bandwidth this transformer has a turns ratio “ ” then the output voltage
of the designed controller is constrained such that it is not af- is , so that for equality of output dc voltage in the ac and
fected by the resonance currents. dc circuits it follows that
(5)
III. RECTIFIER AS AN IDEAL TRANSFORMER
Assuming the dc inductance in Fig. 1 is sufficiently large
to ensure that the diodes of the rectifier are in continuous con- IV. DC EQUIVALENT CIRCUIT MODEL
duction with negligible overlap, the input to the rectifier circuit After replacing the rectifier with an ideal “transformer”
consists of an ideal sinusoidal voltage driven from the resonant model and the transformations of the resonant circuits in Fig. 2,
tank and a square wave current, so that a simple Fourier analysis the dc equivalent circuit of the pick-up and controller can be
results in an ideal “transformer” relationship between the funda- redrawn as shown in Fig. 3. The model of Fig. 3 was verified
mental ac rms components and the resulting dc output [5]. This in two stages. Firstly, the voltage magnitude and the energy
“transformer” turns ratio for the circuit of Fig. 1 driven from an (E) stored over time in each of the ac source resonant circuits
ac source is given by [Figs. 2(a) and (b)], when sampled at their respective voltage
peaks were noted. These were compared with the voltage and
(4) energy stored within the capacitor of the dc equivalent circuit
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BOYS et al.: DC ANALYSIS TECHNIQUE FOR INDUCTIVE POWER TRANSFER PICK-UPS
[Fig. 2(c)] at the corresponding points in time and were found
to be identical as shown in Fig. 4(a) and (b), respectively.
Secondly, the dynamic start-up response showing the output
voltage of the equivalent circuit of Fig. 3 and the circuit of
Fig. 1 were compared as shown in Fig. 5. Both transient and
steady state responses show excellent agreement.
All elements of the switch-mode controller can now be re-
flected to the “primary” side of this ideal “transformer” to en-
able an equivalent circuit for controller design using simple
state-space averaging techniques [5], as all the complicated high
frequency dynamics of the system have been removed.
The result of such analysis, is shown in (6) and (7) at the top of
the page. The third order transfer function has one dominant real
pole, although in the case of varying duty cycle two right-half
plane zeros also exist which must be considered when devel-
oping a fast switching controller. Here represents the on-state
duty cycle of switch S, and represents the winding resistance
of the dc inductor , which if not included causes the two
complex poles to become highly underdamped, and would be
problematic from a control perspective.
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53
(6)
(7)
V. CONCLUSION
A novel method for modeling a complex parallel resonant
pick-up for ICPT applications using dc equivalent circuits has
been described and verified under transient and steady state con-
ditions. The simplicity of the model allows simple closed form
analytical expressions to be developed for designing different
controller options.
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