A Comprehensive Comparison Study of Planar Circular and Square Couplers for IPT Applications

Planar circular and square couplers (PCC and PSC) are two magnetic couplers that are most frequently employed in inductive power transfer (IPT) systems. However, PCC and PSC are not comprehensively compared. As a result, which coupler should be employed in a specific application is unclear. This paper compares PCC and PSC in terms of coupling coefficient, self-inductance factor, misalignment tolerance, coupler quality factor, cost, weight, and size. To make the comparison fair, PCC and PSC are firstly optimized. Two control IPT systems, one employing PCC while the other utilizing PSC, are built in PSIM. The advantages and disadvantages of PCC and PSC are further verified. PCC outperforms PSC in cost, weight, size, and coupler quality factor, but PSC performs better in coupling coefficient, self-inductance factor, and misalignment tolerance. Hence, PSC is preferable in most applications except rotating case.