A New Hybrid Magnetic Coupler for Large Misalignment Tolerance in Inductive Power Transfer System

Wireless charging has been widely used in a variety of applications. However, pad misalignment can influence system parameters that can lead to increased losses as well as reduction in power throughput. In this article, a new coupler based on solenoid-quadrature coils (SQ) is proposed. By combining with hybrid compensation networks, this coupler can stabilize the system mutual inductance within a certain offset range in order to keep power throughput at a certain level. As a result, this coupler can greatly improve the anti-misalignment capability of the wireless charging system. A 20W prototype is developed and tested in the lab. The experimental results validate that the proposed hybrid SQ-SQ coupler system has an improved misalignment performance.