Software-based wireless power transfer platform for power control experimentation

We present the design and evaluation of a software-based wireless power transfer platform that enables various open- and closed-loop power control functions to be prototyped and experimented. Our platform is based on a loosely-coupled planar wireless power transfer system using the class E power amplifier via inductive coupling. In conjunction with the system, flexible control functions are implemented using NI DAQ board and algorithms on MATLAB/Simulink software. For verifying our platform, we show two power control experimentations. The one is an output voltage regulation on different receiver position using a closed-loop power control, and the other is a no-load and metal detection using an open-loop power control. We show the good performance results for our two experimentations. We believe it is the first inexpensive platform that readily experiments the power control algorithm of a loosely-coupled planar wireless power transfer system.