Wireless Power Transfer via Magnetic Resonance Coupling (MRC) with Reduced Standby Power Consumption

Wireless power transfer (WPT) technology with various transfer mechanisms such as inductive coupling, magnetic resonance and capacitive coupling is being widely researched. Until now, power transfer efficiency (PTE) and power transfer capability (PTC) have been the primary concerns for designing and developing WPT systems. Therefore, a lot of studies have been documented to improve PTE and PTC. However, power consumption in the standby mode, also defined as the no-load mode, has been rarely studied. Recently, since the number of WPT products has been gradually increasing, it is necessary to develop techniques for reducing the standby power consumption of WPT systems. This paper investigates the standby power consumption of commercial WPT products. Moreover, a standby power reduction technique for WPT systems via magnetic resonance coupling (MRC) with a parallel resonance type resonator is proposed. To achieve a further standby power reduction, the voltage control of an AC/DC travel adapter is also adopted. The operational principles and characteristics are described and verified with simulation and experimental results. The proposed method greatly reduces the standby power consumption of a WPT system via MRC from 2.03 W to 0.19 W.