Concept of a Scalable Communication System for Industrial Wireless Power Transfer Modules

Modular wireless power distribution systems will be commonly used in next generation factories to supply industrial production equipment, in particular automated guided vehicles. This requires the development of a flexible and standardized communication system in between individual Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) modules and production equipment. Therefore, we first derive the requirements for such a system in order to incorporate them in a generic communication concept. This concept focuses on the zero configuration and user-friendly expandability of the system, in which the communication unit is integrated in each WPT module. The paper describes the communication concept and discusses the advantages and disadvantages. The work concludes with an outlook on the practical implementation in a research project.