4030 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 48, NO.

11, NOVEMBER 2012

The Design and Research of a New Kind Small Size Resonator Used in
Magnetic Coupling Resonance Wireless Energy Transmission System
Jun Zhao , Guizhi Xu , Chao Zhang , Yang Li , Xian Zhang , Qingxin Yang , Ying Li , and Hongli Yu
Province-Ministry Joint Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Field and Electrical Apparatus Reliability, Hebei University of
Technology, Tianjin 300130, China
Research Department of Frontiers, Institute of Electrical Engineering Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100190, China

Magnetic coupling resonance wireless energy transmission is a new technology, which provides fast, convenient and safe energy supply
for small size household electrical appliances, body implanted devices and so on. In this technology, it is necessary to design small size
resonators for the above devices for energy transfer. Here, a new kind small size resonator, which is 1.35 cm in volume, is designed. This
design is based on the coupled-mode theory (CMT), which is applied to explain the magnetic coupling resonance system’s transmission
rule. Extensive simulations have been conduced to validate the design. The Ansoft software is used in the simulation of the resonator’s
resonance frequency. The relationships between resonator parameters and resonance frequency are obtained. It is found that the simu-
lations are consistent well with experimental results and the resonator can meet the requirements of small size electrical appliances.
Index Terms—Coupled mode analysis, frequency, magnetic resonance, resonators.

I. INTRODUCTION

W IRELESS energy transmission technology is always the

dream of human beings, because it can transfer energy
without exposed conductors, interlocks or connectors, and thus
Fig. 1. Structure of the Witricity system.
allow the system to work with far lower risk of electric shock
hazards. Three types of technologies are used in wireless energy
transmission nowadays: 1) the electromagnetic induction cou-
find that it is safe when human exposure to the dispersed mag-
pling technology for short distance transmission, with the effec-
netic field close to the resonant coils [4]. The volume of the
tive transmission distance only a few centimeters; 2) the mag-
energy receiving part must be small enough to accommodate in
netic coupling resonance technology for middle distance trans-
such small devices, so it is important to design a small size en-
mission, with the effective transmission distance from dozens
ergy receiving resonator to promote the development of wireless
of centimeters to a few meters; and 3) the microwave or laser
energy transmission technology.
for long distance transmission, with the transmission distance
This paper mainly aims at the design of a small size resonator
more than thousands of meters [1].
used in magnetic coupling resonance wireless energy transmis-
MIT scientists made some breakthroughs in wireless energy
sion system. Ansoft HFSS software is used to make modeling
transmission technology in 2007 named as Witricity. They used
and simulation of resonator and it is found that the simulations
magnetic coupling resonance theory to realize the middle dis-
are consistent well with experimental results. Through changing
tance wireless energy transmission, a 60 W bulb was lighted
the resonator parameters value, the relationships between each
in the distance of two meters and the transmission efficiency
parameter and the resonance frequency have been established
is around 40%. This technology has the advantages as follows
and a small size resonator suitable for magnetic coupling reso-
compared to other technologies [2]:
nance wireless energy transmission system is fabricated.
1) witricity system can achieve middle distance transmission:
effective energy transmission can occur when the distance II. SYSTEM ANALYSIS
is some times of the coil’s size; The whole Witricity system includes four major parts (see
2) the energy can be transmitted directionally in Witricity Fig. 1): high frequency sine signal and power amplifier circuit,
system: the energy can only be received when the resonant driving coil and resonant primary coil (coil 1), resonant sec-
coil exists; ondary coil (coil 2) and energy absorbing coil, rectifier and filter
3) witricity system has strong adaptability: the energy trans- circuit. The driving coil is connected with power amplifier cir-
mission process will not be influenced by obstacles [3]. cuit and the energy absorbing coil is connected with load. The
Nowadays the application areas of wireless energy transmis- proposed Witricity system uses a pair of resonators with the
sion technology include small size household electrical appli- same shape and structure to achieve wireless energy transfer.
ances, body implanted devices, electric automobile, etc. and we According to coupled mode theory (CMT), the energy ex-
change between the two resonant cells can be expressed using
Manuscript received March 01, 2012; revised April 18, 2012, April 27, 2012, the following equations:
and April 29, 2012; accepted April 30, 2012. Date of current version October
19, 2012. Corresponding author: J. Zhao (e-mail: ashunjun@126.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online (1)
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMAG.2012.2198625

0018-9464/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

ZHAO et al.: THE DESIGN AND RESEARCH OF A NEW KIND SMALL SIZE RESONATOR
Fig. 2. Energy transfer state of the Witricity system. (a) Resonant State.
(b) Nonresonant State.
where and are the transmitter and the receiver field
amplitudes, and are the characteristic angular frequency,
and are the characteristic frequency,
and are the inherent loss produced by absorption
and radiation, and are the coupling coefficients between
the two coils, and are the coupling coefficients between
the coils and other nonresonant objects around.
The total energy of the two resonant coils in the whole mag-
netic coupling resonance wireless energy transmission system
is
(2)
In magnetic coupling resonance system, the optimal strong
coupling resonance can be received only when the two reso-
nant coils have the same resonance frequency and the
transferred energy is far larger than the consumption energy in
this condition. At this time the primary resonant coil extracts
energy from driving coil continually and transfers the energy to
secondary resonant coil through strong coupling resonance. So
a stable energy transmission channel can be built between the
two resonant coils, as shown in Fig. 2(a) . and shown in Figs. 4 to 6. X axis and Y axis mean frequency
The energy is not transmitted from primary resonant coil to
secondary resonant coil unidirectional when resonance occurs.
The actual situations are that the two coils transfer energy re-
ciprocally. The energy of coil 2 reach 0 when the energy of coil
1 reaches maximum and coil 1 is 0 when coil 2 has the max-
imum. The total energy of the two coils will diminish gradually
because of radiation, coil resistance and so on, so the resonance
will not stop until the energy run out if there is no external en-
ergy supplement.
4031
Fig. 3. Plane square spiral resonator.
The resonance of the two coils is very weak if the two reso-
nant coils have different resonance frequency even
in strong coupling state. This is because if the resonant frequen-
cies are not the same, when the magnetic field in coil 1 disap-
pears, it can not be supplied by the magnetic field of coil 2, and
vice versa. That is to say when the energy of one of the two coils
reaches minimum, the coil can not get energy supplies from the
other coil. If resonance can not start from the beginning, the en-
ergy of coil 2 will always be zero. It is shown in Fig. 2(b) that
no matter how long the time is, the energy will not change [5].
III. RESONATOR SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENT ANALYSIS
The resonators, shown in Fig. 3, adopt the plane spiral struc-
ture and consist of three layers. The width of the resonator is
10 cm. The frontal layer is fabricated with spiral-type copper
wire. The medium layer is made of epoxy resin board and the
opposite layer consists of several copper strips. The inductance,
produced by frontal conductor layer, and the capacitance, pro-
duced by the overlap of both frontal and opposite conductor
layers, constitute the resonator needed by the system through
a complex series and parallel circuits. This new resonator has
the opposite conductor layer, compared to the traditional elec-
tromagnetic induction energy transmission system [6].
Ansoft software is used to make simulation of the resonance
frequency. Wave ports are supposed as the only ports to ex-
change energy between interior and exterior of the calculated
regional. So port 1 and port 2 are designed in our simulation.
S-parameters are the useful method for representing a N ports
network and they can describe the transmission and reflection
power of each port under given stimulation. The S matrix of
two port network is as follows:
(3)
refers to the signal exiting at port i for the signal incident
at port j. Scattering parameter is the ratio of the two waves
and the unit of S parameter is dB. The relationships be-
tween resonator parameters and resonant frequency are obtained
and , respectively, and the X value when the reaches the
minimum is resonant frequency. In Figs. 4 to 6, the variable w
means the copper wire width varying from 1 mm to 6 mm, s
means the copper wire thickness varying from 0.8 to 2 mm and
l means the resonator width varying from 70 to 150 mm. The
m1 to m7 are the names of different resonators.
It is found that the copper wire width and the resonator width
play an important role for the resonator resonance frequency and
the thickness of the copper affects very slightly. Experiments
4032
Fig. 4. Simulation of resonant frequency versus copper wire width.
Fig. 5. Simulation of resonant frequency versus copper wire thickness.
Fig. 6. Simulation of resonant frequency versus resonator width.
were carried out and the contrast of resonance frequency be-
tween the simulation results and experimental results are shown
in Fig. 7.
Resonance frequency is very important for the system be-
cause it can determine the system whether to work and work
at which point. The simulation results are consistent well with
experimental results and the maximum error is less than 10%.
The simulations can provide insights for coil optimization in the
next step. The reasons of differences are as follows:
1) differences exist between resonator size and simulation pa-
rameters because of the resonators are made by hand;
2) the copper and epoxy resin board are not connected tightly
enough and it has an effect on resonance capacitance;
3) the joints of outer copper are not welded closely and the
resonance inductance and ohms resistor are altered;
4) the epoxy resin board and the copper are soft and they are
easily deformed.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 48, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2012
Fig. 7. The contrast of resonance frequency. (a) Resonant frequency versus
coil wire width. (b) Resonant frequency versus resonator width.
Fig. 8. Resonator and experiment.
IV. THE DESIGN AND RESEARCH OF A NEW KIND OF
SMALL SIZE RESONATOR
The small size resonator (see Fig. 8) is designed on the basis
of simulations and experiments. Specific parameters are shown
in Table I and the resonator volume is 1.35 cm . By measuring
the input/output voltage and current, the transmission power and
efficiency of the whole system are calculated (see Fig. 9). The
amplitude of the exciting voltage, which is given by an ampli-
fier, is 25 V at the frequency range from 1 MHz to 28 MHz. The
load is a 3 W bulb.
In Fig. 9(a), the primary resonator is fixed and the two res-
onators are shaft aligned. The secondary resonator is moved ver-
tically to the primary resonator with the distance from 1 cm to 10
cm. In Fig. 9(b), the primary resonator is fixed and the vertical
distance of the two resonators is 2 cm. At first the two resonators
are shaft aligned and then the secondary resonator is moved hor-
izontally from 0 to 5 cm. In Fig. 9(c), the primary resonator is
fixed and the distance between the centers of the two resonators
is 2 cm invariably. The center of the secondary resonator is also
fixed and it rotates perpendicular to the desktop from 0 to 90 .
ZHAO et al.: THE DESIGN AND RESEARCH OF A NEW KIND SMALL SIZE RESONATOR 4033

It is found from Fig. 9(a) that the maximum efficiency reaches

62% with the distance of 1 cm. Even when the distance is 10 cm
the output power is 98 mW, which can provide enough power to
a heart pacemaker. The output voltage increases firstly and then
reduces from 0.2 to 2 cm and it is because the two resonators
influence each other enormously when they are adjacent. When
the two resonators are not aligned [see Fig. 9(b) and (c)] the
Witricity system can still work well.

V. CONCLUSION

As a new method of wireless energy transfer, Witricity has a

high potential in small size electrical applications. In this paper,
a small size 1.35 cm resonator is designed and the whole mag-
netic coupling resonance wireless energy transmission system
has been built. Experiment and simulation results are reported
to demonstrate the effectiveness and characteristics of the pro-
posed method. Our experimental and simulation analysis have
indicated that the Witricity technology will provide a powerful
solution to power small size electrical applications.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work was supported by Key Basic Research Project of

Hebei Applied Basic Research Program Contract 11965628D
and Tianjin Application Foundation and Advanced Technology
Research Program Contract 11JCZDJC17000.

Fig. 9. Output power and efficiency. (a) Output power and efficiency versus
distance. (b) Output power and efficiency versus horizontal displacement dis-
tance. (c) Output power and efficiency versus rotation angle.
TABLE I
RESONATOR PARAMETERS
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