Practical Model for Metamaterials in Wireless Power Transfer Systems

Metamaterials (MTMs) with extraordinary electromagnetic properties are recently applied to wireless power transfer (WPT) systems to improve power transmission efficiency. Although theoretical progress has been made on MTMs in low frequency near field, in the operation frequency of most WPT systems (usually MHz), the design of MTMs still utilizes the model used in high-frequency applications. Therefore, a practical model of MTMs in low MHz band is proposed in this work. The resonance frequency and quality factor are used to describe the characteristics of an MTM slab. The near field WPT systems with MTMs are then modeled as electric circuits, the system efficiency is explicitly deduced, and optimization algorithms are employed to optimize the MTM resonance frequency and maximize the system efficiency. The proposed practical model is validated via a prototype wireless power transfer system operating at 6.78 MHz. Experiments show that the proposed MTM model has good accuracy for low MHz WPT systems compared with the high-frequency model. The proposed practical model of MTMs provides an accurate way to analyze the performance of MTM at low MHz frequencies and greatly benefits the future exploitation of MTM-based low-frequency near field applications.