Wireless power transfer boosted by magnetic field enhancer

MRFE use could potentially boost transfer efficiency by as much as 5,000 per cent in some systems, said experts from from North Carolina State University and Carnegie Mellon University.

Wireless power transfer works by having a transmitter coil generate a magnetic field; a receiver coil then draws energy from that magnetic field. One of the major roadblocks for development of marketable wireless power transfer technologies is achieving high efficiency.

“Our experimental results show double the efficiency using the MRFE in comparison to air alone,” said David Ricketts, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State and corresponding author of a paper describing the work.

Enhancing wireless power efficiency has been a major goal of many research groups and metamaterials have been the leading candidates proposed for enhancing efficiency.

“We performed a comprehensive analysis using computer models of wireless power systems and found that MRFE could ultimately be five times more efficient than use of metamaterials and 50 times more efficient than transmitting through air alone,” Ricketts said in a statement.