Experimental investigation of compact metamaterial for high efficiency mid-range wireless power transfer applications

We investigate a compact metamaterial for enhanced magnetic coupling in a resonator coupled wireless power transfer system operating at around 6.5 MHz. The metamaterial is constructed by realizing an array of three-turn spiral resonators on a thin slab. Although the metamaterial has its own loss, the experimental results show that the proposed metamaterial slab enhances the power transmission capability. The number of unit cells in the array is an important parameter, because exceeding a certain number of unit cells does not enhance the efficiency due to the loss of the slab. Furthermore, strong surface mode resonance is observed when two slabs are assembled with proper gap spacing between them. By using the optimization approach, we achieve a significant efficiency improvement at a mid-range distance. The measured efficiencies are 71.1% and 54.3% at a 0.6 and 1.0 m distance, respectively. At a 1.0 m distance, this efficiency performance corresponds to a 270% improvement compared to a case with no metamaterial slab. In addition, we experimentally confirm the threshold distances above which the metamaterial shows enhanced performance. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.