MatWPT: A MATLAB Tool for Wireless Power Transfer Systems Design Optimization

Abstract

This article presents MatWPT, an innovative software developed to support designers during the analysis and development of wireless power transfer (WPT) systems. The software, developed as a MATLAB toolbox, receives the key system characteristics as inputs, such as compensation topology, operating frequency and desired output power. Then, using evolutionary optimization, provides potential design options for meeting the performance criteria defined by the designer, in terms of output power and efficiency. Unlike the solutions available in the literature, the proposed technique allows the component tolerances to be considered. In fact, the tool implements an automatic Monte Carlo analysis to estimate the probability that a specific solution will achieve the expected performance levels, given the fabrication tolerance of the components. This represents valuable information for mass production, as WPT systems are typically very sensitive to component variations. Besides presenting the toolbox and its functionalities, this article also reports the extensive experimentation that the authors conducted on WPT systems, designed using MatWPT. The results obtained with the toolbox are in excellent agreement with the measurements.