2016 IEEE International Conference on Power and Renewable Energy

Effects of Q Factor on Wireless Power Transmission by Magnetic Resonant

Coupling

Ryunosuke Murakami Mamiko Inamori, Masayuki Morimoto

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Tokai University Tokai University
Hiratsuka-shi, Japan Hiratsuka-shi, Japan
e-mail: 5bdpm026@mail.u-tokai.ac.jp e-mail: Inamori@tokai-u.jp.motor@keyaki.cc.u
tokai.ac.jp

Abstract-This paper describes the effects of the Q factor on
wireless power transmission by magnetic resonant coupling.
The Q factor of the antenna for wireless power transmission
needs to be as high as possible. In this paper, the effects of the
Q factor on transmission power and transmission efficiency is
discussed through experiments and simulation.
Keywords-finite element analysis; power efficiency;
trnsmission loss
I. INTRODUCTION
Research into Wireless Power Transmission (WPT) has
been gaining attention due to its safety and convenience as
power can be transmitted without the direct contact of metals
[ 1]. WPT is a promising technology and is expected to see
wide adaption in mobile devices and electric vehicles.
WPT by magnetic resonant coupling has been
increasingly studied [2]-[4]. Magnetic resonance coupling
uses the resonance between the transmitting and receiving
antennas. Therefore, WPT system can transfer high power
over the long distance between the antennas. It maintains
high efficiency between the antennas by using capacitors to
compensate for leakage inductance.
The Q factor of the antenna needs to be maximized. The
Q factor of the antenna is described by equation ( 1).
L
Q=;:
( 1)
almost constant by resonant coupling up to 100mm of the
distance between the antennas. The result of FEA is also
shown in Fig. 1. Here, the ratio is calculated based on the
value of 50mm of distance because there is a large difference
between the analysis and experimental values.
The experimental results are should a lower efficiency
when compared to values from an analytical calculation.
Therefore, the effect of resistance in the antennas requires
investigation. The analysis is carried out by varying
resistance values. Figure 2 shows the circuit used in analysis.
Here, LI and L2 are the coil inductance of transmitting and
receiving antennas, C, and C2 are the capacitor for resonant,
and rl and r2 are the coil resistance, respectively. The dotted
lines highlight WPT system in this paper. In addition, the
power efficiency is ratio of the input power and the output
power in this WPT system.
Figure 3 shows the power efficiency when changing the
resistance. The power efficiency is 100 % when the
resistance is zero. The power efficiency is reduced due to an
increase in resistance values. Additionally, the power
efficiency is influenced only by the resistance of coils in
FEA. The loss in the experiments cannot be explained with
this loss caused by resistance. There is another loss in the
system.
The resistance of coils is varied in this analysis, and the
Q factor is varied. The change of the transmission
characteristics is investigated in terms of the Q factor.

Here, L is the coil inductance of the antenna and r is the J=2MHz

1.2
coil resistance. Maximizing the Q factor requires increasing
self-inductance and reducing resistance. Due to Joule loss, -+-Experiments
reducing resistance leads to an increase in power efficiency.
'"
;: --Analysis
In [5] and [6], the analysis of the antenna parameter is & 0.8
described. In [7], the effects of tissue on the implanted coil :;
Co
parameters are described. However, the effects of the Q '5 0.6
0
factor on transmission characteristics has not been examined '0
.g 0.4
before. In this paper, the effects of the Q factor on '"
cr:
transmitting power and transmission efficiency are discussed 0.2
by Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and experiments.
a
II. SYSTEM MODEL a 50 100 150 200 250

Distance between antennas (mm)

Figure 1 shows the ratio of output power across various
distances between antennas. The frequency f is set to 2 Figure 1. Comparison of output power of finite Element analysis and
[MHz]. The results show that the power transmission is experiments.

978-1-5090-3068-2/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE 139

 power is substantially proportional to the increase in Q factor.
Similarly, Fig. 5 shows the output power POlli' The increase
in output power is also substantially proportional to the
increase in Q factor.
Load
By contrast, Fig. 6 shows the power efficiency. The
power efficiency increases rapidly up to a Q factor of around
..... 30 and then shows a more gradual increase.
..... L _____________ l ..... __....

I nput Power Output Power The power efficiency is defmed as the ratio of input
Pin Pout power and output power. However, the power efficiency
Figure 2. Circuit of WPT by magnetic resonant coupling in finite Element
includes Joule loss of coil resistance. Therefore, the loss in
analysis. WPT system should be discussed apart from the loss.

30
!=2MHz
120
...... 0(0) 25
100 ____ 1(0)
!!3, 80 --*-2(0) 3: 20
Ci.'
15
QI
'0 60
ii:QI
o
:v c.
40

0
a.
10
"
20

o 50 100 150 200 250

Distance between antennas (mm)

Figure 3. Power efficiency in analysis.

III. CONFIGURATION OF EXPERIMENT

The experiment is conducted with the circuit shown in

Fig. 2. The SiC inverter is used as the power source and the
resistor is inserted externally in series. The Q factor is
modified artificially while the self-inductance is kept
constant. This inverter supplies 85 kHz of a square wave
voltage to the WPT system. The input fundamental wave
voltage is adjusted to be constant.
The antenna in the experiments is an air core coil with a
diameter of 140 mm. Both coils are made of single wire
Copper. The specification of coils is shown in Table.l. Here,
ru and rL2 are the AC resistance of the antenna which it is

measured at 85[kHz]. The distance between the antennas is

50mm. The measurement of power is carried out in the terms
of the input and output power. The effective power is
measured by an AC power analyzer.

TABLE I. SPECIFICATION OF COILS IN EXPERIMENTS

Number of turns 30 [turn]

Diameter of winding wire 1.8 [mm]

Diameter of coil 140 [mm]

Self-inductance L" L2 140.4, 139.7 [II H]

AC resistance (85kHz) rL/, ru 0.675, 0.671 [Q]

IV. CHARACTERISTICS OF POWER BY Q FACTOR

Figure 4 shows the effect on input power Pin over

increasing values of the Q factor. The increase in input

140
 V. CHARACTERISTICS OF TRANSMISSION BY Q FACTOR The loss in the WPT system is described in Fig 10 and is
defmed by subtracting the receiving power from the
The transmitting power Ps is defined by subtracting the
transmitting power. Definition of the transmission loss is
Joule loss from input power. Definition of the transmitting
shown in equation (5).
power is shown in equation (2). Here, firms is the effective
current in the transmitting circuit. The second tenn of Eq. (2) (5)
shows Joule loss in the transmitting circuit. The loss of
capacitor resistance is disregarded because the loss is 16
considered negligible.
14

(2)

Figure 7 shows the transmitting power against the Q

factor. The transmitting power increases as the Q factor
increases. The trend of transmitting power is similar to the
input power in Fig. 4.

18

16 20 40 60 80 100 120
Qfactor
14
:s

Figure 8. Receiving power in experiments.
o....v, 12
'"
95
10
a.
OJ) 94
. 8
:::
93
. 6
'1 92
I-
'" 91
u
90
"
0

o . 89
20 40 60 80 100 120
Q factor
.i" 88
I-
87
Figure 7. Transmitting power in experiments.
86

Meanwhile, PR defies as the power is received in the 85

0 20 40 60 80 100 120
receiving antenna. Definition of the receiving power is Qfactor
shown in Eq. (3). Here, f2rms is the effective current in the
Figure 9. Transmission efficiency in experiments.
receiving circuit. The second tenn of equation (3) shows
Joule loss in the receiving circuit.
Figure 8 shows the receiving power against the Q factor. - ---------------------------------------------
Joule loss in transmitting circuit
The receiving power increases as the Q factor increases. The P"
trend of transmitting power is similar to the output power in ----- - ------------------------------------
Fig. 5. Transmission loss PT

------------ r-- -----------------

Joule loss in receiving circuit

(3 ) -----r-- ------
The transmission efficiency fiT is defmed from the ratio
of the transmitting power to the receiving power and shown
in equation (4).
-PR
rJr= Ps (4) Input power Transmitting
power Ps
Receiving
power PR
Output power

Pin Pout

Figure 9 shows the transmission efficiency against the Q

Figure 10. Loss in experimental system.
factor. The transmission efficiency decreases as the Q factor
increases. The trend of transmission efficiency is different
from that of the power efficiency in Fig. 6. VI. CHARACTERISTICS OF Loss BY Q FACTOR
The power efficiency is increased as the Q factor
Figure 1 1 shows the total of Joule loss in the transmitting
increases. The transmission efficiency visually decreases due
and receiving circuits against the Q factor. The total of Joule
to the loss with the Q factor.

141
loss gradually increases as the Q factor increases. Figure 12 increases. Figure 13 shows the ratio of total of Joule loss to
shows the transmission loss increasing as the Q factor the input power. The ratio of the Joule loss decreases as the
increases. Q factor increases. The resistance is reduced as the Q factor
increases. Therefore, the power efficiency is increased.
By contrast, Fig. 14 shows the ratio of the transmission
loss to the power of input, transmitting, receiving, and output.
The ratio of the transmission loss is increased.

6 70
.2
5
::l 60
.Q
b 4
'" 50
o 3
f-
8
::: 40
.2

.Q 30
(;
o .g 20
o 20 40 60 80 100 120 I}.
o factor 10

Figure 11. Total of louie loss in transmitting and receiving circuit

0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Ofactcr

Figure 13. Ratio oflotal of louie loss to input power.

2.5
20
...... Input power
18
Transmission power
16

'* -A- Recieving power
14

Output power
12
o
. 10
0.5 ." 8
g
o
(; 6
o
20 40 60 80 100 120 .
Ofactcr a::

Figure 12. Transmission loss.

o
o 20 40 60 80 100 120
The impact of each loss is described by ratio of each loss o factor

to power because the input power increases as the Q factor Figure 14. Ratio of transmission loss to each power.

(a) Q factor=41 7 (b) Q factor=139

Figure 15. Distribution of magnetic flux density.

142

VII. DISTRIBUTION OF MAGNETIC FLUX DENSITY
The distribution of magnetic flux density is described in
this section. Figure 15 shows the distribution of magnetic
flux density around the antennas with magnetic resonance
coupling. The magnetic flux density is high in the
transmission area. High magnetic flux density means that a
kind of magnetic permeability of this area is high. In other
words, a high magnetic penneability in the transmission area
can refer a high transmission efficiency.
The magnetic flux density in Fig. 15 (a) is higher than
that of Fig. 15 (b). Figure. 15 (a) also shows a higher
magnetic penneability. However, the impedance in Fig. 15 (a)
is low because the Q factor is high. Given the same input
voltage, Fig. 15 (a) shows a higher magnetic flux density due
to the higher current. The relationship between the magnetic
permeability and transmission loss requires further
investigation.
VIII. CONCLUSION
In this paper, the effects of the Q factor on wireless
power transmission by magnetic resonant coupling has been
described. The power efficiency increases as the Q factor
increases. However, the transmission efficiency decreases.
The transmission loss between the antennas increases as the
143
Q factor increases. The cause of transmission loss is unclear
and requires further investigation.
REFERENCES
[ 1] K. Katoh and M. Morimoto, "Design Consideration of Non-contact
Feeding System," International Conference on Electrical Machines
and System, FAOD-06 October 2010.
[2] A. Kurs, A. Karalis, R. Moffatt, J. D. Joannopoulos, P. Fisher and M.
Soljacic, "Wireless Power Transfer via Strongly Coupling Magnetic
Resonances," Science Express, vol. 317 No.5834, pp 83-86, 2007.
[3] K. Kusaka and J. Itoh, "Experimental Verification of Rectifiers with
SiCIGaN for Wireless Power Transfer Using a Magnetic Resonance
Coupling," Power Electronics and Drive Systems, Decmber 20II.
[4 ] S. Noguchi, M. Inamori and Y. Sanada, "Data Transmission for
Resonant-type Wireless Power Transfer," Wireless Personal
Multimedia Communications, October 2011.
[5 ] T. P. Duong and J. W. Lee, "Experimental Results of High-Efficiency
Resonant Coupling Wireless Power Transfer Using a Variable
Coupling Method," IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components
Letters, Vol. 21, No. 8, August 2011.
[6] A. P. Sample, D. T. Meyer and J. R. Smith, "Analysis, Experimental
Results, and Range Adaptation of Magnetically Coupled Resonators
for Wireless Power Transfer," IEEE Transactions on Industrial
Electronics, Vol. 58, pp 544-554, 2011
[7] A. K. RamRakhyani, S. Mirabbasi and M. Chiao "Design and
Optimization of Resonance-Based Efficient Wireless Power Delivery
Systems for Biomedical Implants" IEEE Transactions on Biomedical
Circuits and Systems, Vol. 5, No. I, February 2011