Automatically Reconfigurable Metasurface for Free-Positioning Wireless Power Transfer

Wireless power transfer (WPT) has emerged as a promising technology for powering portable electronic devices and implanted medical devices. However, conventional WPT systems suffer from limited coverage area and poor efficiency that undermines their convenience in many applications. Metasurfaces, as thin sheets of engineered materials that can manipulate electromagnetic fields, have recently gained attention as a technology to enhance WPT systems. In this paper, we propose an automatically reconfigurable metasurface for free-positioning WPT systems. Our study shows that the metasurface-enhanced WPT system can generate a significant enhancement of the scattering parameter from the transmitting coil to the receiving coil, as high as 2.8 times. We propose to further optimize the metasurface configuration to achieve efficient free-positioning WPT with a single Tx coil.