Expandable N-Legged Converter to Drive Closely Spaced Multitransmitter Wireless Power Transfer Systems for Dynamic Charging

Expandable and flexible wireless power transfer (WPT) systems have been in demand in numerous industry applications, especially for dynamic chargers in electric vehicles. Those systems, however, bring about certain technical issues such as modulation technique and topology of the transmitter side, and transferred power profile of the transmitters. In this article, a new converter topology to drive closely spaced segmented dynamic wireless power transfer (DWPT) systems is proposed. The proposed converter can be expanded to cater for different number of transmitters, and it can provide a uniform transferred power profile throughout the path of transmitter coils, known as track. Furthermore, this article focuses on analyzing the operation of the converter and the effect of closely spaced transmitters over its operation. To show the effectiveness of the proposed topology and its modulation technique, the converter is simulated and experimentally tested using a laboratory prototype. The results are compared and analyzed, and their close agreement shows the validity of the proposed technique.