A Hybrid Active/Passive Domino Architecture with MIMO Power Flow Control and Mixed Frequency Operation for Extended Range and Multi-Medium Wireless Power Transfer

Wireless power transfer (WPT) systems with Domino repeater arrays can be used to transfer power through complicated structures and extend the effective transfer range. This paper explored a hybrid active/passive Domino architecture with multi-input multi-output (MIMO) power flow control and mixed-frequency operation. By designing and optimizing the circuits and the control methods, the hybrid active/passive Domino architecture can achieve higher efficiency and higher power transfer capability than a passive domino architecture. The hybrid Domino architecture significantly expands the control degree-of-freedom by enabling multi-way power combining and multi-frequency wireless power transfer. The hybrid Domino architecture also enables the high performance multi-layer multimedium wireless power transfer by combining different control strategies. A prototype hybrid Domino WPT system with ten resonators is built and tested to verify the effectiveness of the approach. The prototype delivered 12 W of power from the source and buffer to the load (56% from the source, and 44% from the buffer) with 40% weighted effective efficiency. The endto-end power transfer distance (22 cm) is more than 4 times of the resonator diameter (5 cm). Another experimental setup is built with two transfer mediums (i.e., chicken breast and salt water) to validate the multi-layer multi-medium power transfer capability of the hybrid Domino architecture, where one active resonator is placed at the interface of the two mediums. The hybrid Domino WPT system can delivery 30% more power than a passive Domino system in the multi-medium WPT experiments.