Search

A 6.78 MHz single-stage transmitter (TX) using a reconfigurable regulating class-D power amplifier (PA) for wireless power transfer (WPT) applications is presented. Based on a 3-mode modulation scheme, the TX achieves power regulation and transmission with only one power stage. A discontinuous-conduction-mode (DCM) zero-voltage switching (ZVS) scheme is adopted to reduce switching loss. A control loop is set to regulate the output voltage of the WPT receiver (RX) by automatically adjusting the transmitting power. With dual-loop control and a proportional-integral (PI) compensation scheme, the loop achieves tight regulation and fast response. The controller is implemented digitally to benefit from the AirFuel® embedded Bluetooth communication link. The PA was fabricated with a high-voltage 0.35 μm CMOS process, and the digital controller with a standard 0.35 μm CMOS process, respectively. Measurement results show that the output voltage of the RX was correctly regulated to 11.7 V under a load change of 50mA to 500mA, and the WPT system could deliver a maximum power of 7.3 W to the RX over a distance of 4.0 cm, and achieved TX to RX peak efficiency of 57.3%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel digital-intensive hybrid transmitter (TX) architecture is presented, combining conventional inphase and quadrature (I/Q) with constrained phase modulation. The proposed architecture utilizes an RF-DAC with phase modulated RF clock and adjusted I/Q components. By incorporating phase modulation the quadrature component is kept small while the inphase component approaches the complex signal envelope. Compared to a digital-quadrature TX architecture this results in a significantly reduced average and peak RF-DAC cell utilization. Therefore, the RF-DAC can be operated in less back-off at higher average output power and drain efficiency. The phase modulation is constrained in order to relax the phase modulators system requirements. Compared to a digital polar TX architecture utilizing an RF digital phase-locked loop with two-point phase modulation, this results in reduced frequency modulation and digital-controlled oscillator tuning range requirements. In addition, the design effort is further shifted from analog to digital domain in order to better exploit the benefits of CMOS technology scaling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]