Calculation of mutual inductance between arbitrarily positioned planar spiral coils for wireless power applications

Mutual inductance is one of the main parameters required to determine the power link’s performance (output voltage, efficiency) in wireless power transfer. The coils are often misaligned angularly in these applications, which affects the mutual inductance and thus the performance. Hence, an accurate calculation of mutual inductance is necessary to decide the working region of the coil. This paper presents an analytical calculation of mutual inductance between two planar spiral coils under angular misalignment conditions. By solving the Neumann integral formula, mutual inductance is derived for constant current-carrying coils, and the final mutual inductance value is calculated numerically. The influence of angular misalignment of the coil, which can be due to nutation and spin angles, on mutual inductance is studied in detail. The mutual inductance of the spiral coil is calculated for different misalignment cases. The accuracy of the calculation results is verified by comparing it with conventional formulas (mainly the Liu, the Babic formula, and the Poletkin formula) and by simulation using the finite element method. The proposed method is a more generalized and simpler one that can be used to calculate the mutual inductance of any size of coils, either spiral or circular, with any lateral and angular misalignments. Finally, a couple of spiral coils are fabricated to validate it experimentally. The comparison of the simulation and experiment results with the calculation result shows its accuracy. Thus, the proposed method can be applied to compute mutual inductance in any angularly misaligned coupling coils for the optimization of the wireless power transfer and their design.