Development of 50W High Quality Factor Printed Circuit Board Coils for a 6.78MHz, 60cm Air-gap Wireless Power Transfer System

In order to supply power to online monitoring systems that are attached to high voltage catenary or overhead wires, a wireless power transfer system is required that is able to transmit power over the insulation gap. Such wireless power transfer systems have transmitter and receiver coils that have diameters of over 10cm. This paper focused on an investigation of the sources of loss in the coils when the coils are fabricated using printed circuit board technology. Using finite element simulation results, it has been shown that the dielectric loss in the substrate was the dominant source of the total loss. It has been demonstrated that the selection of a proper dielectric material was the most critical factor in reducing the loss. For further reduction of the loss, the distributed tuning capacitor method and the slotting of the inter-turn spaces have been proposed. For the evaluation of the proposed methods, four coils have been fabricated and their equivalent series resistances and quality factors were measured. Measured quality factors were greater than 300, which means that these devices will be helpful in achieving high coil-to-coil efficiency.

6.78MHz, 거리 60cm, 50W급 무선 전력 전송 시스템용 High Quality Factor PCB 코일 개발

고압 전선 등에 장착된 시스템에 전원을 공급하기 위해서는 절연 이격 거리 이상의 거리에 무선으로 수십 Watt 급의 전력을 보낼 수 있는 시스템이 필요하다. 이러한 무선 전력 전송 시스템은 대개 코일의 크기가 10cm 이상의 대형이다. 본 연구에서는 이처럼 대형 코일을 Printed circuit board를 이용해 제작할 경우 발생하는 손실 발생원 들을 분석하고 그 중 가장 주요한 손실원인이 Dielectric loss 라는 것을 밝혔다. 또한 이 dielectric loss를 최소화 하기 위해서 PCB의 재질 선정 방법 및 Distributed tuning capacitor method를 제시해 $40cm{\times}40cm$ 크기의 4턴 및 5턴 코일의 설계 방법을 제시했고, 실험을 통해 Quality factor를 300 이상으로 만들 수 있음을 보였다.