A Bidirectional Wireless Power Transfer System with Integrated Near-Field Communication for E-Vehicles

This paper presents the design of a bidirectional wireless power and information transfer system. The wireless information transfer is based on near-field technology, utilizing communication coils integrated into power transfer coils. Compared with conventional far-field-based communication methods (e.g., Bluetooth and WLAN), the proposed near-field-based communication method provides a peer-to-peer feature, as well as lower latency, which enables the simple paring of a transmitter and a receiver for power transfer and the real-time updating of control parameters. Using the established communication, control parameters are transmitted from one side of the system to another side, and the co-control of the inverter and the active rectifier is realized. In addition, this work innovatively presents the communication-signal-based synchronization of an inverter and a rectifier, which requires no AC current sensing in the power path and no complex algorithm for stabilization, unlike conventional current-based synchronization methods. The proposed information and power transfer system was measured under different operating conditions, including aligned and misaligned positions, operating points with different charging powers, and forward and reverse power transfer. The results show that the presented prototype allows a bidirectional power transfer of up to 1.2 kW, and efficiency above 90% for the power ranges from 0.6 kW to 1.2 kW was obtained. Furthermore, the integrated communication is robust to the crosstalk from the power transfer and misalignment, and a zero BER (bit error rate) and ultra-low latency of 15.36 µs are achieved. The presented work thus provides a novel solution to the synchronization and real-time co-control of an active rectifier and an inverter in a wireless power transfer system, utilizing integrated near-field-based communication.