IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 30, NO.

2, FEBRUARY 2015

933

A Methodology for Making a Three-Coil Wireless

Power Transfer System More Energy Efficient Than a
Two-Coil Counterpart for Extended Transfer Distance
W. X. Zhong, Member, IEEE, C. Zhang, Xun Liu, Member, IEEE, and S. Y. Ron Hui, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractA new methodology for ensuring that a three-coil

wireless power transfer system is more energy efficient than a twocoil counterpart is presented in this paper. The theoretical proof
and the conditions for meeting the objective are derived and practically verified in a practical prototype. The key features of the
magnetic design are to: 1) shift the current stress from the primary
driving circuit to the relay resonator; and 2) generate a large relay
current for maximizing magnetic coupling with the receiver coil
for efficient power transfer. Consequently, the current rating and
cost of the driving circuit can be reduced and the overall quality
factor and system energy efficiency are improved. This approach
utilizes the combined advantages of the maximum efficiency principle and the use of relay resonator to overcome the energy efficiency
problem for applications with extended energy transfer distances.
Index TermsContactless power, inductive power transfer, planar wireless charging technology, wireless power transfer (WPT).

I. INTRODUCTION
IRELESS power transfer (WPT) has its root in the twocoil systems demonstrated over a century ago by several
pioneers such as Tesla [1], [2], Hutin and Leblanc [3]. In the
1960s, wireless power research regained interests in the medical implants [4], [5]. Since the 1980s, inductive power transfer
covering relatively high-power applications in industrial inductive power pickup systems and transportation vehicles has been
reported [6], [7]. The dawn of the mobile phone era in the 1990s
also initiated active research and developments in planar wireless charging systems for portable consumer electronics [8] that
have in turn led to the formation of the Wireless Power Consortium and its launch of the first wireless power standard Qi [9].
Most of these projects are of short-range nature, meaning that

Manuscript received July 30, 2013; revised November 12, 2013 and February
5, 2014; accepted March 12, 2014. Date of publication March 18, 2014; date of
current version October 7, 2014. This work was supported by the Hong Kong
Research Grant Council under GRF Project: HKU 712913. Recommended for
publication by Associate Editor C. Fernandez.
W. X. Zhong and C. Zhang are with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
(e-mail: wenxingzhong@gmail.com; guszhang@connect.hku.hk).
X. Liu is with ConvenientPower (HK) Ltd., Shatin, Hong Kong (e-mail:
xun.liu@convenientpower.com).
S. Y. R. Hui is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, U.K., and also with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong,
Pokfulam, Hong Kong (e-mail: ronhui@eee.hku.hk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2014.2312020

the energy transfer distance of the wireless power is less than the
dimension of the transmitter coils. In late 2007, an article on the
use of a four-coil system for WPT in [10] has sparked off a new
round of wireless power research for mid-range applications,
although it was shown later in [11] that the magnetic resonance
concept reported in [10] was not new but was based on the standard near-field magnetic coupling and coils of very high quality
factor. The magnetic resonance based on resonance circuits and
the near-field magnetic coupling concepts for wireless power
have been identified in [12] and [13] as the key contributions by
Tesla.
According to a critical review paper [14], techniques for WPT
can be based on either: 1) maximum efficiency principle; or
2) maximum power transfer principle. The maximum efficiency
principle is preferred in general for power transfer purpose. The
maximum power transfer principle, which requires impedance
matching, has an inherent limitation that the system energy efficiency cannot exceed 50%. For a two-coil system based on
the maximum efficiency principle, the energy efficiency can be
reasonably high for short-range applications, but it will drop
rapidly with increasing transfer distance [15], [16]. So, a fourcoil system based on the maximum power transfer principle has
been reported in [10] to increase the transfer distance at the
expense of energy efficiency. In order to achieve a good compromise of efficiency and transfer distance, it has been pointed
out in [14] that the use of the relay resonators [17][20] or the
domino-resonator systems [21][24] based on the maximum
energy efficiency principle should be considered.
The focus of this paper is to examine the two-coil and threecoil systems from the perspective of energy transfer for an extended air gap. Examples of such applications include wireless
charging systems for office desks and coffee tables, which may
have the driving circuit installed under the table surfaces. The
thickness of the table top represents an extended air gap (typically 3 cm) which is larger than the typical short air gap (typically <0.5 cm) expected in a wireless charging pad for mobile
phones [9]. In particular, a theory and its corresponding conditions for ensuring that a three-coil system being more energy
efficient than a two-coil one is included. The theory has been
verified with measurements obtained from practical prototypes.
The use of three-coil systems has been addressed in [19] and
[24]. But this paper is the first one which identifies the conditions
for the objective analytically based on a patent-pending principle
[25]. In particular, the unique features of shifting the current
stress from the driving coil to the relay coil and enlarging the
coupling between the relay coil and the receiver coil are spelt

0885-8993 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 30, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2015

maximize the power transfer capability of this system. Under

the resonance mode, X1 = X2 = 0. Thus, the overall energy
efficiency of the two-coil system can be expressed as
= 1 2
Fig. 1.

(3)

where

Typical WPT system containing two LC resonators.

1 =

RE 1
RS + RP 1 + RE 1

(4)
2 M 2

is the energy efficiency of the transmitter while RE 1 = R 2 1 2

is the reflected resistance from the receiver to the transmitter
RL
2 =
(5)
RL + RP 2

Fig. 2. Lumped circuit model of a two-resonator system. (a) Original charging

unit. (b) Increased distance. (c) Increased transmitter size.

out. The theory can be applied to both low-power applications

such as a planar wireless charging pad with an extended air gap
or wireless charging of electric vehicles.
II. THEORETICAL ANALYSIS
A. Two-Coil WPT System
Fig. 1 shows the arrangement of a traditional two-coil WPT
system. In practice, each coil is connected with a series capacitor
to form a resonant tank. The use of a capacitor is to compensate
the stray inductance of the transmitter and receiver coils. It has
been shown in [15] and [16] that the overall system energy
efficiency of such two-coil system will reduce drastically as the
transfer distance d increases. Therefore, for a wireless power
system (such as wireless charging pad) with an extended transfer
distance (e.g. 30 mm), a two-coil system will not enjoy high
system efficiency.
The lumped element circuit of the two-resonator system of
Fig. 1 is shown in Fig. 2. Its circuit equations can be expressed
as
(R1 + jX1 )I1 + jM12 I2 = VS

(1)

jM12 I1 + (R2 + jX2 )I2 = 0

(2)

where R1 = RS + RP 1 is the resistance of the transmitter; RS

is the source resistance and RP 1 is the parasitic resistance of the
transmitter (sum of the equivalent series resistance of the Coil
1 and the equivalent series resistance of the Capacitor 1); R2 =
RL + RP 2 is the resistance of the receiver; RL is the load resistance and RP 2 is the parasitic resistance of the receiver Coil 2;
Xi is the reactance Li 1/(Ci ), Li is the inductance, Ci is
the capacitance, and Ii is the current in Resonator i (where i =
1, 2); VS is the voltage source; M12 is the mutual inductance
between two resonators; is the angular frequency.
In this paper, bold letters are used to represent the phasors
and italic letters are used to represent real numbers and RMS
values of the phasors. For example I1 is a current phasor and
I1 is the RMS value of I1 . Tesla has demonstrated that the
coil resonators should operate in resonance mode in order to

is the efficiency of the receiver.

In practice, the load resistance RL is within a certain range
and is load dependent. So, 2 is load dependent and may not
be directly under the control of the designer. However, one can
maximize 1 . In order to boost 1 , RS and RP 1 should be as
small as possible and RE 1 should be large. A large RE 1 implies
that M12 should be large for a given operating frequency and a
given R2 . If the distance between the transmitter and the receiver
increases as shown in Fig. 3, M12 will decrease accordingly and
thereby the efficiency of the system will decrease. In order to
raise the efficiency for a larger power transfer distance, M12
should be increased. Since M12 = k12 L1 L2 and the receiver
coil dimension is usually fixed in a wireless charging standard
or a certain product design, k12 and L1 should be increased to
obtain a larger M12 .
One valid way to increase the coupling coefficient and the
self-inductance is to increase the diameter of the transmitter as
shown in Fig. 3(c). A group of simulations have been carried
out to verify this point and the results will be demonstrated in
the next section.
On the other hand, if the source resistance RS is large compared with RE 1 , the efficiency of the transmitter as expressed in
(4) will be low. The reason is that if the large RS is considered
as part of the resistance in the transmitter, then the quality factor
of the transmitter is drawn down significantly. A high quality
factor of the coils is a critical issue to achieve high-power transfer efficiency. Therefore, the system using two resonators is
not suitable for high-efficiency power transfer when the source
resistance is significant.
B. Three-Coil WPT System
Three-coil systems have attracted special attention in the last
few years [19], [24] because they offer a good compromise in
terms of energy efficiency and transfer distance over the twocoil systems based on the maximum energy efficiency principle
and the four-coil systems based on impedance matching. Here,
a system with three resonators as shown in Fig. 4 is analyzed to
overcome the poor energy efficiency problem for applications
with extended transfer distance. It will be proved that the efficiency of the proposed system, under specific design conditions,
could be higher than that of the two-coil system.
As shown in Fig. 4, an additional coil Coil a is added to the
transmitter side of the original two-coil system. Now, Coil 1

ZHONG et al.: METHODOLOGY FOR MAKING A THREE-COIL WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER SYSTEM

Fig. 3.
size.

Fig. 4.

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Original charging unit and the units with larger distance and larger transmitter. (a) Original charging unit. (b) Increased distance. (c) Increased transmitter

WPT system with an additional resonator at the transmitter side.

becomes a relay or a repeater resonator. It should be noted

that Coil 1 now consists of a winding connected in series of
resonant capacitor to form a coil resonator. For simplicity, the
magnetic coupling between Coil a and the receiver Coil 2 is
assumed to be negligibly small when compared with the effect
of the coupling between Coils 1 and 2 because of the extended
transfer distance. If the resonators are excited at the resonant
frequency (Xa = X1 = X2 = 0), the lumped circuit equations
of the system are
(RS + RP a )Ia + jMa1 I1 = VS

(6)

jMa1 Ia + RP 1 I1 + jM12 I2 = 0

(7)

jM12 I1 + R2 I2 = 0

(8)

where
RP a = winding resistance of the new primary Coil a;
Ma1 = mutual inductance between Coils a and 1.
The overall energy efficiency of the three-coil system is
 = a 1 2

(9)

RE a
R S +R P a +R E a is the efficiency of Coil a while
2 M a2 1
RE a = R P 1 +R E 1 is the reflected resistance from Coils 1 to
2 M 2
a; RE 1 = R 2 1 2 is the reflected resistance from the receiver to
E1
L
and 2 = R L R+R
are the efficiencies
Coil 1; 1 = R P R1 +R
E1
P 2

efficiency of a three-coil system to be higher than that of a twocoil system. This new theory can be implemented and tested
with practical prototypes.
It means that as long as Ma1 is large enough to meet the
inequality of (11), a three-coil system can enjoy higher energy
efficiency than a two-coil system for the same extended transfer
distance. The physical meaning behind this efficiency improvement is that the proposed three-coil system makes use of the
magnetic coupling between Coil a (driving coil) and Coil 1 (relay resonator) so that only a small current is needed in Coil a
to induce a large current in Coil 1 which in turn generates an
enhanced magnetic flux for the power transfer to Coil 2 (the receiver coil). In this proposed method, the large current in Coil 1
does not flow through the source resistance of the power source
and thereby a much smaller power loss can be achieved in the
driving circuit. In addition, the current ratings and stress of the
electronic components in the driving circuit for Coil a can be
reduced, leading to reduced costs and potential reliability improvement. Although the focus of this paper aims at the wireless
charging systems in desks and tables, the advantageous features
of the proposed method are also important for high-power applications such as wireless charging of electric vehicles. Therefore,
the shift of the current stress from the driving coil (and the driving circuit) to the relay coil resonator is a key advantageous
feature of this methodology. The objective of a three-coil system being more efficient than a two-coil one can be achieved by
satisfying inequality (11).

where a =

of Coils 1 and 2, respectively.

For the energy efficiency of the three-coil system to be higher
than that of the two-coil system, the following inequality should
be met
 > .

(10)

After some simple mathematical manipulations, inequality

(10) can be expressed as

RP a
Ma1 > (RP 1 + RE 1 ) 1 +
.
(11)
RS
Equations (1)(11) now provide the mathematical proof and
inequality (11) specifies the required conditions for the energy

III. COMPUTER-AIDED ANALYSIS AND VERIFICATIONS

The specified operating conditions defined by (11) can be
implemented in a three-coil system, namely the driving coil
(Coil a), the relay coil resonator (Coil 1), and the receiver coil
(Coil 2). The relay coil resonator (Coil 1) can be placed between
Coils a and 2. If preferred, the relay coil resonator can also
be placed on the same plane as Coil a. The latter coplanar
arrangement is now used to illustrate the methodology of this
proposal.

A. Effects of the Size of the Transmitter

In this example, the transfer distance is set at 30 mm which
is much larger than 5 mm in a typical wireless charging pad
specified in version 1.1 of the Qi standard [9]. As shown in
Fig. 3, Wr is used to represent the coil width of the receiver

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Fig. 5.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 30, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2015

Receiver of the practical WPT system.

TABLE I
PARAMETERS OF A PRACTICAL RECEIVER COIL
Fig. 6.

coil. This coil width is defined as the difference of the outer

diameter of the coil and the inner hollow radius of the coil.
In this example, the transmitter coil is assumed to have the
same inner hollow radius as the receiver coil does. But this assumption is not compulsory. The coil width of the transmitter
coil is now considered to increase from the same dimension as
the receiver coil initially (i.e., Wr ) to several times of Wr progressively. In this study, the coil width of the transmitter coil is
increased from Wr to 7Wr gradually. The simulations are based
on the parameters of a practically receiver coil. A photograph of
the receiver coil is shown in Fig. 5 and the parameters are shown
in Table I. The wire used is a litz wire which has 24 strands of
no. 40 AWG (0.08 mm diameter). A double-layer shield (ferrite
plate plus copper sheet) has been well studied and adopted for
its good shielding performance. Also, it is reported in [26] that
when the thickness of the ferrite plate is larger than a certain
value, e.g., 0.1 mm for ferrite plate with 3F3 material, the copper
sheet has little effect on the magnetic characteristic and accordingly the power transfer performance of the system. Therefore,
a ferrite plate with a thickness of 1 mm used in Qi compatible
charging systems is applied to the WPT systems studied in this
paper.
The inductance and the ac resistance values are obtained with
the help of a finite-element analysis (FEA) software and the
method used to calculate ac resistance of a coil is used in [27].
When the width of the transmitter coil is 7Wr , Rp1 = 5.27
and Rp2 = 2.99 . The load resistance for the simulation study
is set at 8.75 at the rated power of 5.6 W and a load voltage of 7 V. For tests on reduced power, the load resistance will
be increased while the load voltage is maintained at 7 V. The
simulation results are shown in Fig. 6. In the simulations, the

Energy efficiency versus the coil width of the transmitter coil.

Fig. 7. Energy efficiency of a two-coil system as a function of the source

resistance.

operating frequency is set at 115.6 kHz and the source resistance

is assumed zero initially. (The effects of the source impedance
will be included later.) This assumption of negligible source
impedance or a small impedance can be justified because the
normal driving circuit is most likely a power electronic inverter
fed by an acdc front power stage. The source impedance includes the on-state resistance of two rectifier diodes and the
power MOSFETs and the impedance of the ac voltage source.
As can be seen from Fig. 6, the energy efficiency can be
improved significantly by increasing the size of the transmitter
coil at this operating frequency. The increasing size of the transmitter coil implies an increasing mutual inductance. However,
there is a diminishing return when the size of the transmitter
coil becomes larger. When the coil width of the transmitter is
larger than a certain value, the magnetic coupling between the
transmitter and the receiver will increase more slowly or even
start to decrease.
B. From a Two-Coil System to a Three-Coil System
If the transmitter coil is considered as a single coil, the overall system is still a two-coil system. In this case, the energy
efficiency of a two-coil system will decrease with increasing
source resistance as shown in Fig. 7. For a source impedance
of 2 , the energy efficiency is about 70%. When the source

ZHONG et al.: METHODOLOGY FOR MAKING A THREE-COIL WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER SYSTEM

Fig. 8.

937

Three-coil model for simulations.

resistance becomes 50 , the energy efficiency of the system

is only 24.6%. A good industrial practice is to design a power
source with a small source impedance. This has been the basic principle used in the design of a power electronics-based
switched mode power inverter. With an output filter to attenuate
the high-frequency switching harmonics, such power inverter
can generate a high-quality ac voltage.
In order to improve the power transfer efficiency, the two-coil
system is now transformed into a three-coil system as shown in
Fig. 8. In this example, the large transmitter coil in the twocoil system example is split into two coils to form a three-coil
system. These two split coils remain in the same plane in this
example because such an arrangement suits the design of a table
or desk with Coils a and 1 installed on the bottom side of the
desk. However, it should be noted such coplanar arrangement
is not compulsory. The three coils can be placed in a coaxial
manner with the relay coil between the driving coil and the
receiving coil, such as the arrangement shown in Fig. 4.
In the example of Fig. 8, the driving and the relay coils are
located at the transmitter side. One of the coils is connected to
the power source while the other one operates as a repeater. In
order to determine the optimum arrangements of these two coils,
the original transmitter with a coil width of 7Wr is divided into
two coils. The coil widths of the inner coil and the outer coil
are n Wr and (7n) Wr , respectively. If the inner coil is
used as the driving coil, then the outer coil will be used as the
relay coil, and vice versa. In principle, using the outer coil as the
driving Coil a and the inner coil as the relay Coil 1 may achieve
a slightly better mutual inductance Ma1 for (11). However, it
should be noted that either arrangement is viable as long as
inequality (11) is satisfied. For the relay coil, a series capacitor
is connected in series with the coil to form a coil resonator.
C. Use of the Inner Coil as Coil a and Outer Coil as Coil 1
The first set of simulations have been conducted with the
inner coil connected to the power source (as Coil a) and the
outer coil connected in series with a capacitor to form a relay
resonator (Coil 1). The simulation results are shown in Fig. 9.
For the coil widths of the inner coil and the outer coil as n
Wr and (7n) Wr , respectively, the maximum efficiencies of
the three-coil system as a function of n under a range of source
resistance are shown in Fig. 9.

Fig. 9. Mutual inductance (M a 1 and M 1 2 ) curves and energy efficiency

curves (for source resistance R s = 0, 5, and 50 ) with different sizes for the
inner and outer coils when the inner coil is excited as the driving coil.

Fig. 10. Mutual inductance (M a 1 and M 1 2 ) curves and energy efficiency

curves (for source resistance R s = 0, 5, and 50 ) with different sizes for the
inner and outer coils when the outer coil is excited as the driving coil.

The basic rule is that when the source resistance becomes

larger, the importance of a large Ma1 becomes more obvious.
The reason is that, with a larger Ma1 , a smaller current is required in Coil a in order to generate a current in Coil 1 large
enough for power transfer to Coil 2 according to the previous
analysis. However, a large magnetic coupling between the relay
resonator and the receiver coil (M12 ) also helps to achieve a
high efficiency and this is the reason why the efficiency curve
of the system with 50 source resistance reaches its peak value
at a point which has a relative large Ma1 and M12 at the same
time. On the other hand, when the source resistance is negligibly
small, the effect of Ma1 is smaller.
D. Use of the Inner Coil as Coil 1 and Outer Coil as Coil a
In the second set of simulations, the outer coil is connected
to the power source and thereby, the outer coil is Coil a and the
inner coil (which is now connected in series with a resonant capacitor to form a coil resonator) is Coil 1. In this case, the energy
efficiency of the three-coil system with a 50 source resistance
is much higher than that in the first case (Fig. 10). The reason

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Fig. 11. Efficiency comparison between three-coil and two-coil systems under
different loading conditions when source resistance is 0 .

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 30, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2015

Fig. 12. Efficiency comparison between three-coil and two-coil systems under
different loading conditions when source resistance is 5 .

is that Ma1 and M12 in this case increase simultaneously which

is different compared to that in the first case as shown in Fig. 9.
Therefore, larger magnetic couplings can be obtained for a
higher efficiency.
E. Choice of Structures and Effects of Source Impedance
By comparing the results of these two groups of simulations,
the optimum n which achieves maximum efficiencies with a 5
or 50 source resistance is 6. In other words, the inner coil
has six times Wr while the outer coil has 1Wr (see Fig. 14).
Then, a comparison is made under different loading conditions
between the three-coil system with this optimum combination
(6Wr inner and 1Wr outer while exciting the outer coil) and the
original two-coil system which has a 7Wr transmitter as shown
in Fig. 3(c).
In practice, an ac power source of low impedance should be
used to drive the transmitter coil. If a power inverter fed by an
acdc front power stage is used to drive the WPT system, the
source impedance includes the equivalent on-state resistance
of the two rectifier diodes in the acdc power stage and the
on-state resistance of the power switches and the impedance
of a low-pass filter. The impedance range from 0 to 5 is of
particular interest. Theoretical comparisons on the cases of a
source impedance of 0, 5, and 50 have been studied for a twocoil system and a three-coil system. In this comparative study,
the input voltage is controlled so that the output voltage across
the load resistor is 7 V. With the minimum load resistance in
the simulation study being 8.75 , the rated power PL -rated is
about 5.6 W. Note that the load resistance of 8.75 is used
at the rated power of 5.6 W under an output voltage of 7 V.
This load resistance is then increased while the output voltage
is maintained at 7 V, so that the energy efficiency of the system
over a wide power range can be obtained. This setting simulates the variable load situation in a wireless charging system
for portable electronics. The energy efficiency results are shown
in Figs. 1113. When the source impedance is 0 , as shown in
Fig. 11, there is basically little performance difference between
the two-coil and three-coil systems. However, Figs. 12 and 13

Fig. 13. Efficiency comparison between three-coil and two-coil systems under
different loading conditions when source resistance is 50 .

show that the energy efficiency of the two-coil system will deteriorate much faster than the three-coil one when the source
impedance increases from 5 to 50 . When compared with a
three-coil system, the energy efficiency of a two-coil system deteriorates with increasing source impedance. These simulation
results indicate that a three-coil system based on the proposed
design methodology has better energy efficiency than a two-coil
counterpart for nonzero source impedance.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION
Experiments have been carried out using a practical threecoil system as shown in Fig. 14. The driving coil (Coil a) is
designed to enclose the relay coil (Coil 1). The outer diameter
of Coil 1 is smaller than the size used in previous computer
simulations. Because a gap is needed to separate Coils a and 1,
which is unlike the theoretical case in Fig. 8, the dimensions of
the prototype are slightly different from the theoretical analysis.
In addition, the actual load resistance for the rated power is
8.93 , instead of 8.75 in the simulation study. The practical
parameters of Coils a and 1 are listed in Table II. The electrical

ZHONG et al.: METHODOLOGY FOR MAKING A THREE-COIL WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER SYSTEM

939

TABLE II
PARAMETERS OF THE PRACTICAL COILS ON THE TRANSMITTER SIDE

Fig. 14.

Three-coil system used in experiments.

TABLE III
PARAMETERS OF THE COILS OBTAINED FROM FEA

parameters of the coils are calculated by using the Maxwell

finite-element software and are listed in Table III. It should be
noted that the calculated inductance values assume the presence
of ferrite platesone on one side of the transmitter and the
other on one side of the receiver coil. But for energy efficiency
comparison with practical measurements, the theoretical results
(which are based on the theory in Section II) do not include
magnetic core losses. In practice, ferrite plates of TDK PC40
with a thickness of 1 mm are used for shielding the magnetic
field from the nonreceiving sides of the transmitter and receiver
coils as shown in Fig. 14.
The compensating capacitance of the receiver coil (Coil 2)
is set at about 82 nF which is also close to the optimum value
for an operating frequency of 115.6 kHz in this study. This

Fig. 15. (a) Practical input measurements of v in , iin , and P in for a two-coil
system at an output power of 2.92 W with a source impedance of 50 and a
transfer distance of 3 cm. (b) Practical load measurements of v L , iL , and P L
for a two-coil system at an output power of 2.92 W with a source impedance of
50 and a transfer distance of 3 cm.

operating frequency is within the recommended range in the Qi

standard. The optimum compensating capacitance of Coil 1 is
1.70 and 1.83 nF for 0 and 50 source resistance, respectively.
The energy efficiencies of the three-coil system are compared
with the efficiencies of the two-coil system (in which Coils a
and 1 in the three-coil system are connected in series to form a
single transmitter coil).

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 30, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2015

Fig. 17. Measured and simulated energy efficiencies of the three-coil and
two-coil systems under different loading conditions when the source resistance
is 2 .

Fig. 16. (a) Practical input measurements of v L , iL , and P L for a three-coil

system at an output power of 5.61 W with a source impedance of 50 and a
transfer distance of 3 cm. (b) Practical load measurements of v L , iL , and P L
for a three-coil system at an output power of 5.61 W with a source impedance
of 50 and a transfer distance of 3 cm.

Fig. 18. Measured efficiencies of the three-coil and two-coil systems under
different loading conditions when the source resistance is 50 .

B. Energy Efficiency Evaluation

A. Practical Measurements
Two high speed digital oscilloscopes with mathematical functions are used to record the voltage and current waveforms of
the transmitter coil and receiver coil. For the three-coil system,
the relay current is also monitored and recorded. The transmitter
coils of the two-coil and three-coil systems are driven by an ac
power source. Several source impedance values are inserted for
experiments in order to confirm the theoretical predictions. In
the experiments, it is found that the three-coil system can transfer more power for the same load resistor and a transfer distance
of 3 cm. Fig. 15(a) shows the practical measurements of the
input voltage vin , current iin , and power (Pin ) waveforms. The
input power is 12.70 W. Under these conditions, the corresponding output waveforms are recorded in Fig. 15(b) and the output
power is 2.92 W. This gives an energy efficiency of 23%. Similar
set of input and output measurements have been recorded for
the three-coil system for the same load resistance in Fig. 16(a)
and (b), respectively. For an output power of 5.61 W, the input
power for the three-coil system is only 9.14 W, resulting in an
energy efficiency of 61.4%.

The load resistance is increased so that the energy efficiency

of the two-coil and three-coil systems can be measured for
comparison purpose. Both low and high source impedance tests
have been conducted. For a source impedance of 2 and 50 ,
the following data are plotted for the two-coil and three-coil
systems for comparison:
1) simulated energy efficiency excluding the power losses in
the ferrite plates;
2) measured energy efficiency including the power losses in
the ferrite plates.
The sets of simulated and measured energy efficiency of the
two-coil and three-coil systems driven by a power source with
source impedance of 2 are plotted in Fig. 17. In practice, an
energy efficiency of about 70% can be achieved in existing twocoil systems for charging a 5 W device. Based on the simulation,
it corresponds to an equivalent source resistance of 2 as shown
in Fig. 17 if the power inverter voltage output is considered as
an equivalent ac voltage source. Other system parameters are
RP a = 1.0 , RP 1 = 4.6 , and RP 2 = 0.3 . The practical
load resistance at the rated power of about 5.6 W is 8.93 at an

ZHONG et al.: METHODOLOGY FOR MAKING A THREE-COIL WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER SYSTEM

Fig. 19.

941

Per-unit current vector diagrams of (a) two-coil system, and (b) and (c) three-coil system, with a source resistance of 50 for both systems.

output voltage maintained at about 7 V. This load resistance is

then increased while the output voltage is maintained at about
7 V so that power measurements can be made for determining
the energy efficiency over a wide power range. From Fig. 17, it
is observed that the three-coil system has an energy efficiency
higher than that of the two-coil system throughout the entire
load range. Similar set of results are displayed in Fig. 18 for an
input source impedance of 50 . The energy efficiency of the
two-coil system is much inferior to that of the three-coil system
as the source impedance increases. In both Figs. 17 and 18, the
measured energy efficiency is slightly lower than the simulated
energy efficiency because the simulations do not include the
power losses in the ferrite plates and the parasitic resistance in
the resonant capacitors.
C. Current Stress Evaluation
An effective way to highlight the advantage of the proposed
theory is to check the current stress of the driving circuits in
the transmitter coils of the two-coil and three-coil systems for
the same load currents in the receiver coils. The per-unit vector
diagrams are used here for comparison purposes. With the load
current taken as 1.0 per unit, Fig. 19 shows the per-unit vector
diagrams of the two-coil system and the three-coil system, for
an input source impedance of 50 . The driving current in
the two-coil system is 0.708 per-unit in simulations and 0.698
in measurements, while that of the three-coil system is only
0.150 from measurement results. The relay coil current I2 in
the three-coil system is 0.867, indicating that a large magnetic
flux is generated by the relay coil current for enhanced magnetic
coupling with the receiver coil. Therefore, the features of both
current stress reduction and improved energy efficiency have
been practically confirmed.
V. CONCLUSION
The focus of this paper is to describe a methodology for ensuring that a three-coil WPT system being more energy efficient
than a two-coil counterpart. The theory and design criteria for
achieving this objective have been presented and explained. The
key features of the three-coil system design is to shift the current stress from the driving circuit and coil to the relay coil and
to enhance the magnetic coupling between the relay resonator
and the receiver coil. This approach is envisaged to be an elegant solution to designing planar wireless charging systems

for domestic and office applications such as embedded wireless

charging surfaces on desks and tables in which the thickness of
the desks/tables becomes the extended transfer distance (typically a few centimeters), when compared with a normal wireless
charging pads that have very small transfer distance (typically
less than 0.5 cm). The theory has been practical proven with the
use of practical prototypes. The proposed methodology ensures
that the three-coil system being more energy efficient than a
two-coil one and such advantage becomes more obvious as the
source impedance increases.
In this paper, the three-coil concept is demonstrated with
the transmitter and relay coils arranged on the same plane for
low-power applications. However, it is envisaged that the same
current-stress-shifting principle can be applied to high-power
applications such as wireless charging of electric vehicles. Without any requirement for planar winding structure, the driving
circuit can drive a current transformer with secondary current
stepup capability so that the current stress in the transmitter coil
(and the power driving circuit) can be shifted to the transformers
secondary winding that drives the relay coil.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors are grateful to ConvenientPower (HK) Limited
for its permission to publish some of the materials in this paper.
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W. X. Zhong (M13) was born in China, in 1984.

He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering
from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2007,
and the Ph.D. degree from the City University of
Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow
in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong. His current research interests include synchronous rectification and wireless power
transfer.

C. Zhang was born in China, in 1990. He received

the B.Eng. degree with first class honors in electronic
and communication engineering from the City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, in 2012,
and is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in
the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam,
Hong Kong.
His current research interests include designs and optimizations for wireless power transfer
applications.

Xun Liu (M07) was born in China, in 1978. He

received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China,
in 2001 and 2003, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree
from the City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon,
Hong Kong, in 2007.
He is currently the Chief Technology Officer of
ConvenientPower (HK), Ltd., Shatin, Hong Kong,
where he is leading research, innovation, and standardization of wireless power technology and products. He is also the Vice-Chair of Low Power Work
Group and Medium Power Work Group in the Wireless Power Consortium. His
current research interest includes power electromagnetics.
Dr. Liu received the 2009 IEEE Power Electronics Society Transaction Prize
Paper Award.

S. Y. Ron Hui (F03) received the Ph.D. degree from

Imperial College London, London, U.K., in 1987.
He is currently the Chair Professor of power electronics at The University of Hong Kong (HKU),
Pokfulam, Hong Kong, and Imperial College London. At HKU, he holds the Philip Wong Wilson Wong
Endowed Professorship in electrical engineering. He
has published more than 200 technical papers, including more than 170 refereed journal publications and
book chapters. More than 50 of his patents have been
adopted by industry.
Dr. Hui is an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS and the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS. Since
2013, he has been an Editor of the IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED AND EMERGING TOPICS IN POWER ELECTRONICS. He has been appointed twice as an IEEE
Distinguished Lecturer by the IEEE Power Electronics Society in 2004 and
2006. He served as one of the 18 Administrative Committee members of the
IEEE Power Electronics Society and was the Chairman of its Constitution and
Bylaws Committee from 2002 to 2010. He received the Excellent Teaching
Award in 1998. He received the IEEE Best Paper Award from the IEEE IAS
Committee on Production and Applications of Light in 2002, and two IEEE
Power Electronics Transactions Prize Paper Awards for his publications on
Wireless Battery Charging Platform Technology in 2009 and on LED system
theory in 2010. His inventions on wireless charging platform technology underpin key dimensions of Qi, the worlds first wireless power standard, with
freedom of positioning and localized charging features for wireless charging of
consumer electronics. In November 2010, he received the IEEE Rudolf Chope
R&D Award from the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, the IET Achievement Medal (The Crompton Medal), and was elected to the Fellowship of the
Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering.