IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 25, NO.

5, MAY 2010

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An AC Processing Pickup for IPT Systems

Hunter Hanzhuo Wu, Student Member, IEEE, John T. Boys, and Grant Anthony Covic, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractThis paper presents a new type of inductive power transfer (IPT) pickup that directly regulates the power in ac form, hence producing a controllable high-frequency ac source suitable for lighting applications. The pickup has signicant advantages in terms of increasing system efciency, reducing pickup size, and lowering production cost compared to traditional pickups that also produce a controlled ac output using complex acdcac conversion circuits. The new ac processing pickup employs switches operating under zero-voltage-switching conditions to clamp parts of the resonant voltage across a parallel tuned LC resonant tank to achieve power regulation over a wide load range. The operation of the pickup is analyzed and the circuit waveforms have been veried by experimental results. A complete IPT system using the ac processing pickup was tested on a 500-W lighting system and an efciency of 96% was obtained when delivering 500 W to multiple resistive light bulbs. Index TermsAC-AC power conversion, lighting, magnetic elds, phase control, power electronics, resonant power conversion.

Fig. 1.

IPT system.

I. INTRODUCTION

C2 IL IL c IL r IL pn IL q n L2 Q2 R2 tc tr Vc Vcr Vcpn Vcq n Vo c

NOMENCLATURE Tuning capacitance. Pickup inductor current. Pickup inductor current in clamp mode. Pickup inductor current in resonant mode. In-phase component of the fundamental or harmonic of the pickup inductor current. Quadrature component of the fundamental or harmonic of the pickup inductor current. Pickup inductance. Quality factor of secondary resonant circuit. Load resistor. Time circuit stays in the clamp mode. Time circuit stays in the resonant mode. Tuning capacitor voltage. Tuning capacitor voltage in resonant mode. In-phase component of the fundamental or harmonic of the tuning capacitor voltage. Quadrature component of the fundamental or harmonic of the tuning capacitor voltage. Pickup induced voltage. Controlled phase delay. Angular frequency of primary track current.

Manuscript received August 2, 2009; revised October 26, 2009. Current version published May 7, 2010. Recommended for publication by Associate Editor S. Williamson. H. H. Wu is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Auckland, Auckland 0602, New Zealand (e-mail: hwu063@aucklanduni.ac.nz). J. T. Boys and G. A. Covic are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand (e-mail: j.boys@auckland.ac.nz; ga.covic@auckland.ac.nz). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TPEL.2009.2037002

NDUCTIVE power transfer (IPT) systems are widely used in many applications to deliver power to both mobile and stationary loads without any physical contact [1], [2]. Such systems have a number of advantages, as they are unaffected by dirt, ice, water, and other chemicals and, are thereby, environmentally inert and maintenance free [3]. In addition, these systems can also operate in very clean environments such as clean rooms. Since there is galvanic isolation when delivering electric power, the operating environment is kept very clean compared to a metallic busbar system, where unacceptable levels of carbon residue are generated due to the frictional contact between the carbon brushes and the metallic platform [4]. High-power applications of this technology include continuous power transfer to public transport systems [5], materials handling systems [1], and contact-less battery charging of electric vehicles [3], [6]. Typical low-power applications include contact-less battery charging of cell phones [7], [8] and biomedical implants [9][11]. An IPT system comprises a resonant power converter operating at very low frequencies (VLF) in the range of 10100 kHz and maintains a constant track current in the order of 10200 A in a track loop, as shown in Fig. 1. One or more secondary pickup loads may be placed in proximity to the track and receive power inductively. In each pickup, an inductor, comprising a magnetic core with a high-frequency winding, is magnetically coupled to the track, and tuned for resonance at the track frequency using compensation capacitors [4]. A switch-mode controller controls the power received by the pickup coil, and thereby, regulates the output voltage to the desired value to drive the load. Presently, most IPT systems produce a controlled dc output for recharging batteries or driving motors. In these applications, the most common secondary pickup controller recties the ac power, which is then regulated using a dc shorting (decoupling) switch. Such a pickup controller has the advantage of simple control circuitry and the ability to operate over a wide load range [1], [6], [12]. The detailed operation of the pickup controller can be found in [1]. In order to power high-frequency ac loads such as uorescent lights or stage lights, an extra resonant converter

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Fig. 2.

ACDCAC conversion topology.

or dcac pulsewidth modulation (PWM) inverter is required to produce a controllable ac source. One method of achieving this is simply cascading the IPT pickup controller with a push pull converter, as shown in Fig. 2. However, the addition of a second converter is not ideal because of the large number of components required, which in turn increase cost. In addition, the two-stage conversion process has losses in each stage, which reduce efciency. Likewise, a dcac PWM inverter also has a high component count and even more switching losses than the resonant converter, due to a hard switching operation at these high frequencies. Another technique is to use primary-side control to implement power regulation of the IPT system. This method sends feedback signals such as output voltage and current of the secondary pickup back to the primary converter via a wireless communication channel. Generally, primary-side control has two possible methods of realizationfrequency control [13], [14] or primary current control [15], [16]. However, primary-side control can only be applied to applications, where a single secondary pickup is used. For lighting systems with multiple secondary pickups, power regulation on the primary-side cannot be used, since regulating power on one pickup will affect the operation of other pickups, which may be operating at different power levels. Other secondary-side-control techniques directly regulate power on the ac side to deliberately tune or detune the resonant tank circuit by adding extra reactance. One method used to realize a variable reactance component is to use a capacitor bank and switch capacitors in and out of the resonant circuit to control output power [17]. But this system requires a bulky capacitor bank that increases both cost and size of the overall system. A different technique to realize a variable reactance component is to use a magnetic amplier to produce a variable inductor [18]. Although this may vary the ac power directly, the use of a variable inductor in the nonlinear region of the BH curve can limit the efciency of the overall system. In addition, the variable inductor is expensive to manufacture because it has to manage the high resonant current without fully saturating and also take into account sensitivity issues in the system. One other method to produce a variable reactance component is by switching a xed inductor under soft-switching conditions with a certain duty cycle, and hence, producing an equivalent variable inductor [19]. However, this method lacks the ability to regulate power over a wide load range, as the minimum output voltage it can deliver at no load conditions is the open-circuit voltage of the pickup. Moreover, all the pickups that use tuning/detuning controllers for power regulation reect a poor power factor (PF)

Fig. 3.

AC processing pickup.

to the primary track of the IPT system and the primary power supply has to handle the poor PF. In this paper, a simple ac-processing-pickup controller that can provide controlled ac power over a wide resistive load range is proposed. The pickup is used as a light dimmer to control the power delivered to a bank of multiple incandescent light bulbs while achieving high-frequency soft-switching conditions, contactless energy transmission, electric isolation, and high efciency. The organization of this paper proceeds as follows. Section II describes the circuit operation of the proposed pickup. In Section III, an exact analytical analysis is given using a combination of piecewise linearized operating states. The normalized graphs on the pickup operating characteristics are outlined in Section IV. A design procedure and the experimental results on a 500-W lighting system are given in Section V. Finally, Section VI gives conclusions based on key contributions of the paper. II. CIRCUIT OPERATION The proposed ac processing pickup is shown in Fig. 3. Here, capacitor C2 is tuned to inductor L2 at the frequency of the primary track current (I1 ) to form a resonant tank. The diodes (D1 and D2 ) and switches (S1 and S2 ) form an ac switch. From standard IPT theory, a pickup coil placed on the primary track will have an open-circuit voltage (Vo c ) induced in it as follows: Vo c = jM I1 (1)

where is the operating angular frequency, M is the mutual inductance, and I1 is the primary track current. To illustrate the circuits operation, Fig. 4 shows the oneperiod operation of the ac processing pickup as a sequence of linear circuit stages with each corresponding to a particular switching interval, as illustrated in Fig. 5. Vg 1 and Vg 2 are the PWM gate signals that are driving switches S1 and S2 at 50% duty cycle with the same switching frequency as the IPT track frequency. Consider the situation where waveforms Vg 1 and Vg 2 are controlled with a phase delay relative to the phase of Vo c to clamp parts of the resonant capacitor voltage, as shown in Fig. 5. In mode 1 (M1 , 0 < t t1 ), S1 is turned off and S2 is turned on. The series diode D2 blocks any current owing through S2 , as it is reverse biased. Under this condition, capacitor C2 resonates with pickup inductance L2 like a parallel resonant tank and the

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Fig. 4.

Operating modes of ac processing pickup.

capacitor voltage reaches a peak value and returns back to zero. When the capacitor voltage reaches zero, the circuit enters mode 2 (M2 , t1 < t t2 ). Diode D2 and switch S2 start to conduct and prevent the capacitor voltage building up in the negative direction, as they ideally begin to conduct at zero volts, thereby clamping the output voltage at near zero. This causes S2 to clamp Vc for a phase known as the clamp phase (tc /) at the point where Vc changes from a positive to a negative voltage. In the beginning of mode 3 (M3 , t2 < t t3 ), S1 is turned on and S2 is turned off. Similar to M1 , the circuit operates like a parallel resonant tank and current ows into the load resistor. In mode 4 (M4 , t3 < t T ), similar to M2 , the resonant cycle is terminated and the capacitor voltage is clamped. In this mode, the inductor current ows through the switch S1 and no current ows through the load. After this mode, the circuit returns back to M1 , and thus repeating the switching process. In summary, the clamping action from the equivalent ac switch generates a phase shift between the open-circuit voltage and the capacitor voltage waveform. The ac processing pickup achieves zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) conditions. From Fig. 5, the resonant inductor current starts to ow through S2 at t1 , when there is no voltage across it, hence ZVS is achieved at turn on. When S2 is turned off at t2 , the resonant capacitor in parallel with S2 forces the voltage across S2 to increase slowly in the negative direction, while the current through it decreases to zero. For most practical switches, the turn off is much faster than the rate of increase of the capacitor voltage, so the dv/dt across the switch is relatively small and ZVS is obtained at the switch-OFF condition. Switch S1 operates in a similar manner and also achieves ZVS at turn on, while achieving a low dv/dt at turn off. Likewise, for diodes D1 and D2 , low dv/dt is achieved at turn on, and ZVS is achieved at turn off. In summary, the switches and diodes in the ac processing pickup achieve soft switching. This gives the pickup desirable characteristics such as low switching losses, low switching stress, and reduced electromagnetic interference (EMI) levels. III. PICKUP ANALYSIS From the previous section, it can be seen that the phase shift between Vc and Vo c can be controlled by adjusting the controlled

Fig. 5.

Operating waveforms of ac processing pickup.

phase delay . In this section, the phase delay is used in an exact analysis in the time domain to determine the characteristics of the circuit under steady-state operation. The basis of the analysis method is that the conditions existing in the circuit

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plete solution of the (3) is Vcr (t) = Q2 Vo c cos () t e sin(f t v ) sin(v ) Q2 Vo c cos(t + ) where Q2 = R2 ; L2 1 ; = 2R2 C2 1 1 ; 4Q2 2 (5) (6) (7) (4)

f = and v = tan1

Fig. 6.

Waveform showing two operating states.

(8) In a similar way, considering the initial condition iL r (t)|t=0 = iL (0) and (diL r /dt)|t=0 = (Vo c sin /L2 ), the complete solution to the inductor current is as follows: iL r (t) = iL (0) + 2 t e sin(f t i ) sin(i ) + where 2 = 3 = and i = tan1 f (iL (0) + 2 ) Vo c sin()/L2 + w3 + (iL (0) + 2 ) . Q2 Vo c (Q2 sin() cos ()) ; R2 Q2 Vo c (Q2 cos() + sin ()) ; R2 (10) (11) Q2 Vo c Q2 Vo c 2 sin(t + ) cos(t + ) (9) R2 R2

f cos () iL (0)/ (Q2 Vo c ) cos () + sin () 2

at the end of a particular switching period must be the initial conditions for the start of the next switching period, and these conditions must be identical, thus allowing for steady-state resonant operation. The analysis procedure is greatly simplied based on the following three assumptions. 1) The equivalent series resistance (ESR) of both capacitor C2 and inductor L2 are very small and are neglected. (This is because the resistive losses dissipated by the load are usually much larger.) 2) The switching action of the transistors and diodes are instantaneous and lossless. 3) Capacitor C2 and inductor L2 are perfectly tuned forming a parallel resonant tank with the load. Assuming the resonant tank is perfectly tuned C2 = 1 2 L2 . (2)

(12) To investigate how long the circuit stays in the resonant state, Vcr (t) = 0 can be substituted in (4), resulting in the following expression: Vcr (tr ) = 0 (13)

With reference to Fig. 6, the waveform can be separated into two operating states known as the resonant state and the clamp state. A. Resonant State During the resonant state, the capacitor voltage may be described as Vcr 1 dVcr Vo c d2 Vcr + + = sin(t + ) dt2 R2 C2 dt L2 C2 L2 C2 (3)

where tr is the time the circuit operates in the resonant state. B. Clamp State During the clamp state, the inductor L2 and the voltage source is shorted and the current depends on Vo c . By Kirchhoffs voltage law (KVL), the inductor current equation can now be written as iL c (t) = Vo c L
t

sin(t + ) dt + iL (tr ).
tz

(14)

where the subscript r of Vcr denotes the capacitor voltage in the resonant mode. Considering the initial condition Vcr (t)|t=0 = 0 and (dVcr /dt)|t=0 = (iL (0)/C2 ), the com-

Solving (14), the inductor current can be expressed as iL c (t) = Vo c cos(t + ) + i L L2 (15)

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where i = iL (tr ) + L Vo c cos(tr + ) . L2 (16)

Because the resonant state and the clamp state are repeated each half cycle (with only a polarity change), the relationship iL (0) = iL (T /2) must hold. Hence, the capacitor voltage and inductor current may be represented as piecewise functions from modes M1 to M4 as t 0 t < t1 Vcr (t) 0 t 1 t < t2 (17) Vc (t) = Vcr (t) t2 t < t3 0 t3 t < T t 0 t < t1 iL r (t) iL c (t) t 1 t < t2 iL (t) = (18) iL r (t) t2 t < t3 iL c (t) t3 t < T . Fourier analysis can be performed on both the capacitor voltage and inductor current waveforms to compute the harmonics. The in-phase and quadrature components of both the fundamental and harmonics are given by Vcpn = 2 2 2 2
/

Fig. 7.

Normalized rms output voltage versus controlled phase delay .

Vc (t) cos (nt) dt

0 /

(19)

Vcq n =

Vc (t) sin (nt) dt

0 /

(20)

IL pn =

IL (t) cos (nt) dt

0 /

(21)

IL q n =

IL (t) sin (nt) dt.

0

(22)
Fig. 8. Normalized rms output current versus controlled phase delay .

By obtaining the in-phase and quadrature components of the fundamental inductor current amplitude with respect to the phase of Vo c , the displacement PF (DPF) may be computed using the formula DPF = cos + arctan IL q 1 . IL p1 (23)

IV. PICKUP CHARACTERISTICS The output voltage (or capacitor voltage) characteristics of the pickup is shown in Fig. 7 for different values of Q2 . The normalized output voltage is dened as the ratio of the output voltage over the open-circuit voltage. It can be seen that the output voltage asymptotically decreases as the controlled phase delay increases from zero. The normalized output voltage can be controlled from a maximum value of a parallel tuned pickup (Q2 ) to zero as increases for all load (Q2 ) conditions. The normalized output current is shown in Fig. 8 for a range of Q2 values. It can be seen that the output current of the pickup can

be controlled by as a controllable current source. Fig. 8 shows that the output current stays approximately constant (or has very little variation) as the load resistance changes for pickups at high Q2 (510). Hence, this pickup demonstrates controllable current source behavior. For low Q2 values, the circuit is no longer considered as a current source, as the output current changes with load (or Q2 ). The output currentvoltage characteristic is shown in Fig. 9. The current source behavior is again demonstrated, as the output current stays approximately constant for a given phase delay, irrespective of output voltage, as long as the output voltage is reasonably high. The normalized DPF characteristic is shown in Fig. 10 at different values of Q2 . For pickups with a Q2 above 4, it can be seen that the DPF is nearly at unity under full-load conditions. The DPF drops rapidly for lower Q2 values even at full-load conditions and this conforms with the traditional theory of parallel LC resonant circuits [1]. It can be seen that the

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Fig. 9.

Pickup output voltage current characteristics.

Fig. 11. Harmonic components of output voltage as percentage of the maximum fundamental value at Q 2 = 5.

Fig. 10.

DPF versus per-unit Power. Fig. 12. Harmonic components of input current as percentage of the maximum fundamental value at Q 2 = 5.

DPF decreases as the per-unit power decreases. The per-unit power is dened as the ratio of the output power to the maximum power of the pickup at each Q2 value. The DPF becomes more lagging as increases to decrease output power. The lagging DPF corresponds to an increasing capacitive load reected onto the primary track, and the reected vars have to be sourced by the primary power supply. Even if the pickup has low DPF at lower power levels, the primary power supply is not necessarily overstressed, as the overall power delivered has decreased signicantly. Consequently, if a 500-W pickup with an efciency of 90% is assumed, the primary converter has to source 550 W and 50 vars to deliver 500 W to the load. To deliver 100 W, the primary converter only has to source 110 W and 200 vars at reduced DPF. As such, the overall power that needs to be sourced has decreased signicantly and the stress on the power supply is lower despite reduced DPF. Figs. 11 and 12 show the rst four harmonics for the ac processing pickup operating at a Q2 = 5 obtained from Fourier

analysis for the capacitor (or output) voltage and inductor (or input) current. In these gures, the amplitude of the harmonics is expressed as a function of the fundamental component under full-load conditions. It can be seen that the amplitudes of the harmonic components are relatively low as compared to the fundamental. The highest harmonic component for the output voltage and inductor current does not exceed 6.5% and 2% of the maximum fundamental component, respectively. V. DESIGN PROCEDURE AND RESULTS In this section, the design of an ac processing pickup for a 500-W lighting system is described. The desired output voltage is 220 V and the equivalent load resistance of the light at the maximum power condition is 84 . An asymmetrical S-shaped magnetic inductor was chosen for the prototype pickup because

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Fig. 13.

Numerically calculated waveforms for (a) 100% power, (b) 50% power, and (c) 20% power. TABLE I VOLTAGE AND CURRENT OF COMPONENTS AT RATED LOAD

of its higher output power with the same ferrite volume/length compared to traditional magnetic pickup structures [20]. This pickup has a measured Vo c of 44.5 V and an inductance value of 72.6 H. The primary IPT converter uses an LCL topology operating at a xed frequency of 38.4 kHz [21]. A. Design Procedure The rst step is to determine the tuning capacitance of the circuit. From (2), the nominal tuning capacitance is 239 nF. In the prototype, the tuning capacitance is chosen to closely match the ideal nominal tuning capacitance. Using (5), Q2 of the circuit is 4.8 at maximum power. Equations (17) and (18) are then used to solve for steady-state operating waveforms. Fig. 13 shows the calculated waveforms for the circuit under 100%, 50%, and 20% output power. From the top trace to the bottom trace, in descending order, the traces are the capacitor voltage, inductor current, capacitor current, and S1 current, respectively. It can be seen that the capacitor voltage and inductor current waveform decrease as the controlled phase delay is increased to decrease output power. To calculate the maximum rating conditions for the components, the controlled phase delay has to be set slightly above zero degrees in order to observe the peak current through the switches and maximum rms rating for the capacitor and inductor. The calculated peak and rms value of the voltage and current for the capacitor, inductor, and switch are listed in Table I. It can be concluded from Table I that the switches and diodes have to be rated for both 310 V and 18 A at normal operation.

Fig. 14.

Block diagram for controller.

B. Controller The practical system setup and controller for the ac processing pickup are shown as a block diagram in Fig. 14. The phase of Vo c is measured using a separate phase sense coil L3 placed on the primary track to detect the phase of the track current, which is exactly 90 out of phase with the open-circuit voltage (Vo c I1 90 ). The controlled phase delay is set by a computer interface, while a microcontroller accordingly adjusts the switch gate drive waveforms. The gate-control waveforms are generated, as shown in Fig. 5. The pickup also operates with a closed-loop controller, where the output voltage is set to a desired value by the microcontroller. The microcontroller is congured to maintain the desired load voltage by adjusting in accordance with measurements of the output voltage. C. Experimental Results The ac processing pickup, as described earlier, was coupled to a small section of track (see Fig. 14) and used to drive an ac load comprising a 500-W incandescent light bulb bank. Fig. 15 shows the circuit waveforms for the ac processing pickup at

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Fig. 15.

Measured waveforms for (a) 100% power, (b) 50% power, and (c) 20% power with light bulb load.

Fig. 16.

Output power versus .

Fig. 17.

DPF versus per-unit power.

100%, 50%, and 20% power when is set to 0 , 49 , and 75 , respectively. From the top trace to the bottom trace, in descending order, the traces are the capacitor voltage, inductor current, capacitor current, and switch current. The inductor current and capacitor voltage are both sinusoidal having low distortion at 100% power. The measurements as shown have very good correlation with the calculated waveforms in Fig. 13. The amplitudes of the measured waveforms are within 10% of the values calculated by (17) and (18). The capacitor and switch current waveforms each have square pulses either missing or present, as predicted by theory, with signicant high-frequency components. Due to the 100-kHz bandwidth limitation of the current probe, the ltering effect results in oscillations in the capacitor and switch current, which do not exist in practice. Despite this, it is evident that the correlations between the calculated and experimental waveforms are very good. Fig. 16 shows that the output power can be controlled over a wide load range by adjusting . Note that, although the control range is from 0 to 180 , the phase controller only needs to change between 0 and 120 to regulate power over the entire operation range. The analytical results using (17) and (18) are also plotted on the same gure for comparison purposes. Since the analytical analysis ignores the ESR losses in both the pickup

inductor and tuning capacitor, and the losses in the switches and diodes, the output power is higher than that obtained from experimental measurements. Despite this, the controller is quite efcient and the difference between the two is not greater than 10%. Fig. 17 shows the DPF for both the calculated and measured waveforms. Similar to before, the DPF is measured at the terminals of the short length of track, as shown in Fig. 14. It can be seen that both the measured and calculated DPF values are near unity at high power levels. The measured PF is also added for comparison purposes. This PF is only marginally below the DPF at high output powers and starts to reduce faster than the DPF at lower output powers, as the harmonics in the inductor current waveform increase. Although this pickup has low DPF and substantial harmonics at low power levels, the overall stress imposed on the primary power supply is relatively small at light load. An efciency versus output power plot is shown in Fig. 18 for both the overall IPT system and the ac processing pickup by itself. Referring to Fig. 14, the overall IPT system efciency is determined using measures of the dc input power to the primary power supply and the ac output power from the secondary pickup. Similarly, the pickup efciency is calculated using the

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Fig. 18.

Efciency versus output power.

ac input power delivered to a short length of primary track that the secondary pickup is coupled upon and the ac output power from the secondary pickup. The pickup efciency measurement neglects the supply (LCL converter) power losses and gives a more meaningful measure of the conversion efciency of the pickup itself. It can be seen that the efciency of the pickup remains above 90% when the output power is more than 125 W to the load. With a 500-W load, the efciency of the ac processing pickup and the overall IPT system can reach as high as 96% and 89%, respectively. VI. CONCLUSION This paper presents a new IPT pickup that has signicant advantages compared to traditional pickups that use acdcac conversion topologies for producing a controllable ac output voltage. The output voltage of the ac pickup can be fully controlled while achieving ZVS conditions. At high Q2 value, the ac pickup demonstrates controllable current source property, which may be desirable in lighting applications. Although this pickup has low DPF and substantial harmonics at low power levels, the overall stress imposed on the primary power supply is relatively small. The ac processing pickup can be controlled over a wide load range for a 500-W lighting system and a maximum efciency of 96% was obtained. REFERENCES
[1] J. T. Boys, G. A. Covic, and A. W. Green, Stability and control of inductively coupled power transfer systems, Inst. Electr. Eng. Proc. Electr. Power Appl., vol. 147, no. 1, pp. 3743, 2000. [2] S. Valtchev, B. Borges, K. Brandisky, and J. B. Klaassens, Resonant contactless energy transfer with improved efciency, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 685699, Mar. 2009. [3] T. Chun Sen, S. Yue, S. Yu Gang, N. Sing Kiong, and A. P. Hu, Determining multiple steady-state ZCS operating points of a switch-mode contactless power transfer system, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 416425, Feb. 2009. [4] G. A. Covic, J. T. Boys, A. M. W. Tam, and J. C. H. Peng, Self tuning pick-ups for inductive power transfer, in Proc. IEEE Power Electron. Spec. Conf. (PESC 2008), pp. 34893494.

[5] G. A. Covic, G. A. J. Elliott, O. H. Stielau, R. M. Green, and J. T. Boys, The design of a contact-less energy transfer system for a people mover system, in Proc. Int. Conf. Power Syst. Technol. (PowerCon 2000), pp. 7984. [6] C.-S. Wang, O. H. Stielau, and G. A. Covic, Design considerations for a contactless electric vehicle battery charger, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 52, no. 5, pp. 13081314, Oct. 2005. [7] L. Xun and S. Y. Hui, Optimal design of a hybrid winding structure for planar contactless battery charging platform, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 455463, Jan. 2008. [8] Y. P. Su, L. Xun, and S. Y. R. Hui, Mutual inductance calculation of movable planar coils on parallel surfaces, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 11151123, Apr. 2009. [9] A. Ghahary and B. H. Cho, Design of transcutaneous energy transmission system using a series resonant converter, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 261269, Apr. 1992. [10] B. L. Cannon, J. F. Hoburg, D. D. Stancil, and S. C. Goldstein, Magnetic resonant coupling as a potential means for wireless power transfer to multiple small receivers, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 24, no. 7, pp. 18191825, Jul. 2009. [11] G. B. Joung and B. H. Cho, An energy transmission system for an articial heart using leakage inductance compensation of transcutaneous transformer, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 13, no. 6, pp. 10131022, Nov. 1998. [12] J. T. Boys and G. A. Covic, Decoupling circuits, U.S. Patent 7 279 850, Oct. 9, 2007. [13] P. Si, Wireless power supply for implantable biomedical devices, Ph.D. thesis, Electr. Electron. Eng., Univ. Auckland, Auckland, 2007.. [14] P. Si, A. P. Hu, S. Malpas, and D. Budgett, A frequency control method for regulating wireless power to implantable devices, IEEE Trans. Biomed. Circuits Syst., vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 2229, Mar. 2008. [15] W. Guoxing, L. Wentai, M. Sivaprakasam, and G. A. Kendir, Design and analysis of an adaptive transcutaneous power telemetry for biomedical implants, IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. I, Reg. Papers, vol. 52, no. 10, pp. 21092117, Oct. 2005. [16] D. J. Thrimawithana and U. K. Madawala, Analysis of split-capacitor push-pull parallel-resonant converter in boost mode, IEEE Tran. Power Electron., vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 359368, Jan. 2008. [17] M. Eghtesadi, Inductive power transfer to an electric vehicle-analytical model, in Proc. IEEE 40th Veh. Technol. Conf., 2009, pp. 100104. [18] J. U. Hsu, A. P. Hu, A. Swain, X. Dai, and Y. Sun, A new contactless power pick-up with continuous variable inductor control using magnetic amplier, in Proc. Int. Conf. Power Syst. Technol., 2006, pp. 18. [19] A. P. Hu and S. Hussmann, Improved power ow control for contactless moving sensor applications, IEEE Power Electron. Lett., vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 135138, Dec. 2004. [20] G. A. J. Elliott, G. A. Covic, D. Kacprzak, and J. T. Boys, A new concept: Asymmetrical pick-ups for inductively coupled power transfer monorail systems, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 42, no. 10, pp. 33893391, Oct. 2006. [21] M. L. G. Kissin, C. Y. Huang, G. A. Covic, and J. T. Boys, Detection of the tuned point of a xed-frequency LCL resonant power supply, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 11401143, Apr. 2009.

Hunter Hanzhuo Wu (S05) received the B.E. degree (Hons.) in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, in 2008, where he is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree. His research interests include inductive (contactless) power transfer systems and resonant power converters.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 25, NO. 5, MAY 2010

John T. Boys received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, in 1962. He was with SPS technologies for ve years before returning to academia as a Lecturer with the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Since 1977, he has been with the University of Auckland, where he is currently a Professor of electronics with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and is engaged in teaching and research. He has authored or coauthored more than 100 papers in international journals and holds more than 20 U.S. patents. His research interests include power electronics and inductive power transfer. Dr. Boy is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and a Distinguished Fellow of the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand.

Grant Anthony Covic (S88M89SM04) received the B.E. (Hons.) and the Ph.D. degrees from The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, in 1986 and 1993 respectively. He was was a Full-time Lecturer in 1992, a Senior Lecturer in 2000, and an Associate Professor in 2007 with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Auckland, where he is currently the Head of the power research cluster in the Faculty of Engineering. He has authored or coauthored more than 80 papers in international journals and conferences and holds a number of patents in the eld of inductive (contactless) power transfer (IPT). His research interests include power electronics and IPT.