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Resonant inductive coupling wireless power transfer (RIC-WPT) is a leading field of research due to the growing number of applications that can benefit from this technology: from biomedical implants to consumer electronics, fractionated spacecraft, and electric vehicles, amongst others. However, applications are currently limited to point-to-point-links and do not target single input-multiple output (SIMO) scenarios. New challenges and applications of resonant non-radiative wireless power transfer emphasize the necessity to explore, predict, and assess the behavior of RIC-WPT in SIMO links. Moreover, new system-level metrics have to be derived to study the scalability of multi-point wireless power transfer applications and to provide design guidelines for these systems. In this article a single input-multiple output RIC-WPT system is modeled analytically from a circuit-centric point of view and validated using a finite element field solver. The analytical model and associated closed formulation is finally used to derive system-level metrics to predict the behavior and scalability of RIC SIMO systems, showcasing the results for an asymmetric SIMO scenario.

Resonant Inductive Coupling Wireless Power Transfer is a key technology to provide an efficient and harmless wireless energy channel to consumer electronics, biomedical implants and wireless sensor networks. However, current applications are limited to point-to-point links and do not explore the capabilities of Multi-Node Resonant Inductive Coupling Wireless Power Transfer Systems. In such a system, the multi-path relaying effect between different nodes could effectively improve the performance of the link in terms of power transferred to the load and power transfer efficiency. However, depending on the impedance and resonant frequency of the nodes that generate the multi-path effect, these nodes could also act as interfering objects, therefore a) making the transmitter and/or receiver act as a pass-band filter and b) loosing part of the transmitter magnetic field through coupling to the interfering node. In this article, a circuit-based analytical model that predicts the behavior of a Multi-Node Resonant Inductive Coupling link is proposed and used to perform a design-space exploration of the multi-path relaying effect in RIC Wireless Power Transfer Systems.

This paper presents a RIC-WPT system with class-E inverter and class-DE rectifier along with its analytical design procedure. By using the class-E inverter as a transmitter and the class-DE rectifier as a receiver, the designed WPT system can achieve a high power-delivery efficiency because of the class-E ZVS/ZDS conditions in both the inverter and the rectifier. In the experimental results, the system achieved 73.0 % overall efficiency at 9.87 W (50 Ω) output power, coil distance 10 cm, and 1 MHz operating frequency. The experimental results showed good agreement with the design specifications, which indicates the validity of the design procedure.