An F-Type Compensated Capacitive Power Transfer System Allowing for Sudden Change of Pickup

When wirelessly supplying electric power to movable devices using capacitive power transfer (CPT) technology, the sudden move in and move out of the pickup will cause a sudden change to the system structure. As a result, the current and voltage of the inverter may increase dramatically, which may destroy the semiconductor switches or other circuit components, and the system may consume a lot of power after the pickup is removed. To address the issues, this paper proposes an F-type compensated CPT system based on the characteristics of the inductor-capacitor-inductor resonant network. A steady-state model of the proposed CPT system is established, and a set of design equations is provided. The feasibility and validity of the proposed topology and its parameter design method have been verified by the simulation and experimental results. It has demonstrated experimentally that the CPT prototype can be self-protected and automatically enter standby mode after the pickup is removed, and restore to deliver the required power (>25 W) to the load at a high power efficiency (>80%) after the pickup is moved back to the primary circuit, which are the inherent features of the proposed system rather than relying on any additional detection and control.