A Uniform Voltage Gain Control for Alignment Robustness in Wireless EV Charging

The efficiency of wireless power transfer is sensitive to the horizontal and vertical distances between the transmitter and receiver coils due to the magnetic coupling change. To address the output voltage variation and efficiency drop caused by misalignment, a uniform voltage gain frequency control is implemented to improve the power delivery and efficiency of wireless power transfer under misalignment. The frequency is tuned according to the amplitude and phase-frequency characteristics of coupling variations in order to maintain a uniform output voltage in the receiver coil. Experimental comparison of three control methods, including fixed frequency control, resonant frequency control, and the proposed uniform gain control was conducted and demonstrated that the uniform voltage gain control is the most robust method for managing misalignment in wireless charging applications.