Current Overshoot Suppression of Wireless Power Transfer Systems With on–off Keying Modulation

The energy efficiency of an inductive wireless power transfer (WPT) system will deviate from the possible peak value if the magnetic coupling of the transmitter and receiver coils or the load resistance changes. To achieve maximum-efficiency tracking regardless of coupling or load changes, on-off keying (OOK) modulation is used. However it has the issue of large surge current in the circuits during OOK modulation. The current overshoots of a series-series (SS) compensated WPT system at the startup stage might be much higher than the rated current. The current overshoots not only increase the stress on the power switch devices but also cause high voltage spikes across the windings and the resonant capacitors which is a challenge for insulation design. A soft-start scheme is proposed to address the current overshoot problem. The principle of the soft-start scheme can be essentially applied to WPT systems with different compensation topologies. The experimental results of a 3.3-kW prototype verify that the proposed soft-start scheme effectively suppress the current overshoots.