Demonstration of wireless power transfer

Abstract

Wireless power transfer is the process via which electrical energy is channelled from a source to a load without the use of wires. This process is used continuously around us in electrical transformers, occurring very efficiently, but this transfer takes place over extremely short distances. The distances across which power transfer was attempted are much larger, comparable to a few times the largest physical dimension of the source/load. In this study, oscillatory magnetic fields were used to couple the source with the load as this method offers a number of advantages over other known techniques of wireless power transfer. The project consisted of analysing wireless power transfer through both experimental and computer simulation procedures. Experiments were performed on a setup which was built to achieve medium range wireless power transfer. The data gathered through experimentation was used to elucidate the maximum power transfer and the efficiency of the process with respect to the distance across which wireless power was transmitted. Computer simulations were run to try and model the constructed wireless power transfer setup. These results were compared to the experimental data to check the validity of the simulations.