A Comparison between Class-E DC-DC Design Methodologies for Wireless Power Transfer

Abstract

We consider the design of Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) systems based on inductive links and focus on recent works where the whole WPT system (i.e. both energy transmitter and energy receiver) is designed as an isolated resonant class-E DC-DC converter characterized by a loosely-coupled transformer. The aim of this work is to compare the classic WPT design approach with a novel one, which allows achieving the same performance with a significant reduction in the number of reactive components of the circuit, with beneficial effects in terms of system complexity, size, and cost. We will also show that such a reduction in the number of reactive components leads to improved performance robustness to variations in the inductive link coupling factor.