MIPRO 2012, May 21-25,2012, Opatija, Croatia

Wireless Power Transfer for Mobile Phone

Charging Device
L. Olvitz, D. Vinko and T. vedek
Department of Communications, Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Osijek, Croatia
e-mail: dvinko@etfos.hr

Abstract With an ongoing trend in mobile phone charger

standardization, the next step to make the charging process
even more user-friendly is to eliminate the physical cable
connection between the charger and the mobile phone. To
achieve a wireless charging of a mobile phone, a wireless
power transfer system must be designed. One such system is
presented in this paper. Theory of the wireless power
transfer is explained and a functional wireless charger
device is realized. Presented wireless charger device has the
power transfer capability of around 0.5 W at a maximum
distance of 2.5 cm, which is sufficient to charge a regular
mobile phone.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Cell phone chargers are slowly being standardized

mostly because of the power capabilities and wide
availability of the USB connectors. This is because cell
phones are becoming basically portable computers and
need to have a capability to connect with other computers.
USB connector offers power and a communication
solution. Micro USB connectors on the cell phone end are
becoming a standard feature and are making a universal
charger possible. Since USB delivers 5 V, all new cell
phones are made to be compatible with this voltage level.
The lithium batteries work on 3.6 V and because of that
the cell phones have their own power converters. This fact
makes job of making a universal charger a lot easier.
Currently there is a couple of wireless chargers on the
market such as Powemat and Powerbeam [1] but they are
not practical and because of that they are only a fancy
accessory. Technology used to transfer power from the
charger to the cell phone differs with manufacturer. Most
common way of transferring energy is inductive coupling,
but there is also a direct contact method, infrared power
transfer and radio frequency (RF) power transfer [1]. All
of them work with limitations specific to technology of
choice.

RF technology transfers power with radio waves and

can also be used. Once more it can interfere with other RF
devices and it is limited to a 5 W transmitter with Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) regulations [1].
Because of this power limitation on the transmitter, the
power transferred to the receiving end is limited to mW
range.
Inductive coupling can transfer energy wirelessly and
safely. It does not radiate RF, IR signals, and does not
need LOS conditions. Because of its benefits this is the
technology of choice for wireless power transfer. At the
Institute of Technology in Massachusetts Marin Soljai
has successfully transferred 60W of electricity over the
distance of 2 m [2].
WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER THEORY

II.

To understand how inductive coupling works one

needs to understand the theory behind it. Wireless power
transfer with inductive coupling is basically using an air
core transformer where the primary and the secondary are
not fixed together like in a typical transformer. Such
power transfer methods are widely used for passive RFID
powering [3]-[7], where the needed power is smaller with
respect to mobile phone charging.
The schematic of the inductively coupled system used
for wireless power transfer is given in Fig. 1. It comprises
of a primary and a secondary coil.
Primary side, through which the power is transferred,
is shown in Fig. 1 as a power supply (US, RS) and a coil
(L1). The secondary side is formed by resonant circuit (L2
and C2) followed by rectifier (D and Cload) and resistive
load Rload representing power consumption of the mobile
phone battery charger.

Infrared technology transfers power through light

beam using laser diodes. Powerbeam has developed kits
ranging from 100 mW, 2.5 W, to 10 W with range of
around 10 m [1]. This technology can work but has
serious limitations. First, it requires direct line of sight
(LOS) between the transmitter and the receiver, the beam
can be interrupted and can interfere with IR remote
controls. Lastly transferring more than 10W of power
with a laser can be very dangerous.
This work was supported by the Ministry of Science, Education and
Sports of the Republic of Croatia under project 165-0361630-3049.

141

i1
RS

i2

L1

L2
u1

u2

C2

Cload

US

Figure 1. Wireless power transfer system

Rload

The power transfer is realized by inductively coupled

coils L1 and L2 forming loosely coupled air core
transformer, whose mathematical formulation is given in
(1) and (2).

di
di
u1 = L1 1 M 2
dt
dt

(1)

di2
di
M 1
dt
dt

(2)

u2 = L2

For the purpose of mathematical analysis the air core

transformer is replaced with T equivalent circuit (Fig. 2).
Resistors R1 and R2 are resistive parts of L1 and L2 coils.
R1

X1

X2

RS

R2

XM

XC2

Cload

D
ZT
Cload

Rload

UT

Figure 3. Wireless power transfer system with equivalent Thevenin

power supply

Figure 4. shows the Thevenin voltage and impedance

for different values of mutual inductance M, which derives
from physical placement of the coupled coils L1 and L2.
Since the distance between coupled coils and their threeaxial alignment are not constant, UT and ZT vary in a wide
range of values.

Rload
350

US

Thevenin voltage [V]

300

Figure 2. Wireless power transfer system with T equivalent circuit for

air-core transformer

The values X1, X2, XM and XC2 in equivalent circuit are

as given in (3)-(6), respectively. This corresponds to a
phasor analysis. The aim is to replace the wireless power
transfer system with Thevenin voltage and Thevenin
impendance. By so doing the mathematical formulation of
the wireless power transfer can be evaluated.

X 1 = j (L1 M )

Z T = 2 L22

0 -9
10

(5)

1
=
j C 2

Thevenin impedance [ohm]

X M = j M

(6)

2 [L12 R2 + M 2 (RS + R1 )]+ R2 (RS + R1 )2

S

+ R1 ) + 2 M 2 + (L1 R2 )
2

4 M 2 L1 L2
+ jL2

2
2
2
2
R2 (RS + R1 ) + M + (L1 R2 )

(8)

x 10

-8

-7

-8

-7

10
10
Mutual inductance [H]

10

-6

2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0 -9
10

M
R2 (RS + R1 ) + M jL1 R2
(7)

C2 R2 (RS + R1 ) + 2 M 2 2 + (L1 R2 )2
2

100

(4)

[R (R

150

50

Equations (7) and (8) give the calculated values for

Thevenin voltage UT and impedance ZT, for system
operating at resonant frequency      . Fig. 3
shows the wireless power transfer system with equivalent
Thevenin power supply.

UT = U S

200

(3)

X 2 = j (L2 M )

X C2

250

10
10
Mutual inductance [H]

10

-6

Figure 4. Thevenin voltage and impedance for different M values

Analytical results shown in Figure 4. correspond to

coils with resistance R1 = R2 = 0.1 . With a higher
resistive part of the coupled coils, that is, with lower Q
factor, a maximal achievable voltage at the secondary side
lowers.
From Fig. 4. can be seen that maximal voltage is
achieved for M = 510-7 H. Therefore, the Fig. 5 gives the
Thevenin voltage values for various combination of R1
and R2, with M = 510-7 H.

142

10

III.

300

With the theory explained, in this section the practical

design is described. First the design requirements.
Transmitter needs to be practical and as small as possible
which means it should be built as a charging pad not much
larger than the phone itself. Receiver should be small to fit
on or in the phone and simple to manufacture. It has been
concluded that both transmitting and receiving coil need
to be with the highest quality factor achievable on the
PCB. The coils should not be considerably larger than the
cell phone because the secondary coil should be able to
enclose the open surface area in the middle of the primary
coil. The reason for a spiral planar coils usage is their
convenience for the flat pad charger, and they can also be
easily built in the cell phone itself.

250

R2 [ohm]

200
10

150
100
50

-1

10 -1
10

10
R1 [ohm]

10

CIRCUIT

Figure 5. Impact of Q factor (R1 and R2 resistance) of coupled coils L1

and L2 on Thevenin voltage value

It can be seen that the Q factor of the secondary side

has significant impact on power transfer performance,
therefore the coil design with highest possible Q will be
the main focus of many design requirements. It has to be
about the same size as the cell phone because the
transmitting and the receiving coil should be ideally the
same size. It has to have the highest possible Q, and must
operate at the highest frequency without transmitting radio
waves (RF). That is possible if the wavelength is small
enough with respect to the dimensions of the coil itself.
This is satisfied for the mobile phone sized coil and
frequencies in high frequency region (HF) which spans
from about 3 to 30 MHz.
A frequency spectrum in HF region that is not
occupied must be used. According to [8] for frequency
spectrum in Croatia there is a lot of choices of unused
frequency bands. The best spectrum region would be the
one with the widest spectrum of unused frequencies. With
that in mind one choice is the obvious and that is
frequency region from 15.8 to 17.48 MHz which is 1.68
MHz wide. Since we dont want to interfere with occupied
spectrums we will chose the middle of our chosen
spectrum which is 16.64 MHz. This is the target frequency
of the presented system.
Using frequency in HF region has its downsides. In the
MHz range skin effect can have influence in the final
charger performance.

Starting at the transmitter the easiest way is to make it

from single piece of PCB and as simple and as reliable as
can be done. What is needed is an oscillator with stable
frequency, power amplifier and a transmitting coil that
resonates.
In Fig. 6. the schematics for the transmitter can be
seen. It consists of an oscillator made from 16 MHz
crystal oscillator and an inverter.
Signal is then amplified with the five remaining
inverters in a 14 pin inverter chip. Next, there is a low
pass filter designed to filter out crystal oscillator
harmonics and to limit the current drawn from the
oscillator. From there we have a power amplifier made
from two transistors. They are connected in a Darlington
configuration for power amplification. The transmitter coil
and a variable capacitor are connected for parallel
resonance. In that configuration the minimum current is
drawn when resonance is achieved. This is a good way
for controlling the current and the transmitted power.
There is also a current limiting resistor R6 for protection.
Since parallel resonance is used, the voltage on the
transmitting coil is double of the input voltage of the
wireless charger.
The PCB is designed so that both parallel and serial
resonances can be achieved. The same thing is made for
the receiver. Testing has shown that using parallel
resonances for both the transmitter and receiver works
fine and does not deliver too much power to the cell
phone.

Skin effect is an effect where current is forced to the

outer edges of a conductor. The effect is more evident as
the frequency goes up. According to (9) the skin depth at
16 MHz is around 1.631*10-5m [4]. Since the coils and
conductors will be made on an printed circuit board (PCB)
this will not have a significant impact, because there will
still be 93.2 % of the conductor used, since the copper
thickness on PCB is 0.035 mm.






(9)

Where
is the skin depth of the used conductor with
conductivity and magnetic permeability , at the given
frequency f.

143

Figure 6. Final schematics for the transmitter

Figure 7. Receiver schematics

The receiver as shown in Fig. 7 is made from LC

oscillator (for both the parallel and series resonance), one
diode rectifier, filtering capacitor, and a zener diode.
There are also four white LED diodes for demonstration
purposes. Using jumper JP1 from Fig. 7 we can choose to
light up the LEDs or to charge a phone. Jumper JP2 is
used to choose from series or parallel resonance mode.
Design of the schematics and the PCB was done using
Cadsoft Eagle Professional 5.7.0. The final product is
shown in Fig. 8.

As can be seen in Fig. 9 on the receiver we get 25.6 V

peak to peak sinusoidal waveform. Since only 5 V is
needed, this seems too much, but this voltage will drop
under load. How much it will drop depends on
transmitting coil inductance and quality factor. In our case
it drops to about 12V, and the rest is removed by zener
diode. The final charger is tuned so there is not a lot of
excess voltage. Using series resonance on the receiving
coil voltage would drop and the current would rise. Since
we are using parallel LC receiving setup exact resonance
does not have to be achieved and tuning the circuit
becomes easier. Also the detuning over time by aging
components and by accident has less of an effect on the
chargers performance.
Next set of measurements are power transfer
efficiency tests. Maximum power drawn from the circuit
was 100 mA at 5 V. This results in 0.5 W on the
secondary while the primary was using 3.042 W. That
means this charger is around 16.44 % efficient. Much
higher efficiencies where achieved according to [2], but
with such low power consumption in the first place this
results are acceptable. With further tuning the efficiency
could be raised.
Frequency spectrum that is being radiated can cause
interferences with other nearby systems or with the phone
itself. Crystal oscillators have high quality factor in
respect with other oscillators such as phase shift
oscillators. This means that their higher and lower
harmonics have quite large amplitudes with comparison to
their basic frequency. This is clearly shown in Fig. 10.
Having filters to prevent higher harmonics from being
amplified or transmitted becomes very important. This
prototype does transmit some signals beyond HF region,
but these harmonics can be easily filtered.

Figure 8. Final wireless cell phone charger

IV.

MEASUREMENTS

The most important measurements are power

consumption, power transfer efficiency, wave forms and
spectrum analysis.

Cell phones have couple of antennas built in them, and

every conductor inside them can pick up noise from the
wireless charger. It is also important to check if the cell
phone can establish a connection with the base station and
send or receive messages. It also must be checked if other
function of the phone work. With presented design no
problems were located and every tested function worked
without any problems.

Figure 9. Voltage waveform on the receiver coil

Figure 10. Frequency specter of the crystal oscillator

144

V.

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

The presented concept of the wireless mobile phone

charger has an operating distance up to 2.5 cm between
charger and mobile phone. Power transfer of 0.5 W is
accomplished, which is sufficient to charge a mobile
phone. The charger design is simple enough and it does
not interfere with the mobile phone functionality while the
device is charging.
For the future work, the communication technology
integration in the charger is needed. Bluetooth can provide
the communication option to the charger that needs to
have more functionality since it is practical only for a
desktop use. Size of the transmitter and the fact that it still
needs a regular power adapter make this charger
unpractical if charging the phone is its only application.
Standardizing the chargers will not be enough for the
future use. As the power demands grow every day
electronics need to be as functional as possible and as
energy efficient as we can make them. To keep the power
consumption at its minimum and to keep the batteries
from overcharging phones processor can be used to
regulate the charging process (smart charging). With the
integration
of
Bluetooth
communication
and
implementation of smart charging, wireless charger has a
chance to change the way we use our phones and to
become a very useful tool.

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[2]

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[4]

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