Page 10 - PEN Ebook March 2021
P. 10

Cover Story - Design                                                                                                                                                                                   Cover Story - Design


                                                                                                                                 formance of the standard Qi FOD method: actual       This is possible due to a highly optimized power

                                                                                                                                 voltage and current are used in the calculation      system architecture. The inverter on the trans-
                                                                                                                                 and not the inverter DC power. The solution is       mitter side is driven by the wireless charging
                                                                                                                                 more accurate and can detect smaller foreign         driver WCDSC006 and powered by Infineon's
                                                                                                                                 objects. It prevents over- (No foreign object de-    high-performance OptiMOS™ MOSFET technolo-
                                                                                                                                 tected) or underestimating losses (FOD fail with     gy with low R DS(on) . A broad MOSFET portfolio is
                                                                                                                                 no object present). The transmitter employs AI       available to meet a wide range of system require-
                                                                                                                                 and machine learning to determine if the charg-      ments. On the receiver side, an active bridge rec-
                                                                                                                                 ing environment is safe when metallic objects are    tifier is used to optimize efficiency. The Minotaur
                                                                                                                                 present. All of this runs on a microcontroller from   solution reaches peak efficiency levels of ~95

                                                                                                                                 the XMC™-SC Power Controller family, Infine-         percent DC-DC efficiency at 45 W wireless power
                                                                                                                                 on's microcontroller family dedicated for wireless   transfer. It also maintains excellent efficiency
                                                                                                                                 charging.                                            across the entire power range up to 45 W.


                                                                                                                                 Highest system efficiency of up to 95                INFINEON, TOGETHER WITH
                                                                                                                                 percent                                              ITS PREMIUM PARTNER SPARK
          Figure 3: Temperature measurements on the transmitter and the receiver side after 45 minutes of wireless power operation at                                                 CONNECTED OFFERS A BROAD
          45 W (Source: Spark Connected).                                                                                        In order to manage thermal limitations to guaran-
                                                                                                                                 tee safe system operation, highest system effi-      RANGE OF SOLUTIONS FOR
          frequency and thus changing the AC waveform.         and receiver. Bluetooth ICs, such as the Infineon                 ciency is required at higher power levels. During    WIRELESS CHARGING
          From the receiver to the transmitter-side ampli-     CYW20719, are available in different packages                     operation, the Minotaur solution fully meets the
          tude shift keying (ASK) is used by switching a re-   and provide low-power and robust Bluetooth                        WPC Qi thermal limitations and complies with         Spark Connected and Infineon already today offer
          sistor to change the receiver side circuit's imped-  communication facilitated by the easy-to-inte-                    the WPC Qi standards.                                a broad range of reference solutions (see Fig-
          ance. By sensing the coil voltage and current on     grate software environment ModusToolbox .
                                                                                                        ®
          the transmitter side, the load change on the re-
          ceiver side can be monitored and translated into     Robust and reliable FOD
          a communication signal. This operation principle     Standard foreign object detection (FOD) methods

          becomes increasingly difficult at higher power       rely on the large primary coil winding for detect-
          levels as a) the load change is becoming more        ing foreign objects, which reduces sensitivity and
          difficult to sense due to being smaller compared     signal to noise ratio. Smaller objects are diffi-
          to the overall power transmitted and b) harmonic     cult to detect due to their small impact on the
          distortions compromise the signal.                   much larger primary coil's magnetic field. Existing
                                                               transmitter solutions measure the parameters
          The Minotaur solution of Spark Connected and         needed for the power loss calculation (voltage

          Infineon uses in-band communication complying        and current) at the DC supply of the inverter. This
          with the WPC Qi communication protocol which         distorts the measurement when compared with
          is applied in low-power wireless charging scenar-    the actual values at the coil, causing an inaccu-
          ios. In addition, the Minotaur solution is capa-     rate transmitter loss calculation.
          ble of switching to out-of-band communication
          via Bluetooth in higher-power operating modes        The Minotaur solution is Qi-certified and ful-
          to guarantee a stable communication channel.         ly meets Qi FOD functionality and performance
          The high-bandwidth data throughput also en-          requirements. The solution employs accurate
                                                                                                                                 Figure 4: High peak efficiency (95 % tested and measured) of the 45 W laptop transmitter and receiver solution, a distance of 6
          ables fast authentication between transmitter        measurement techniques that improve the per-                      mm between transmitter and receiver (Source: Spark Connected).


  10      MARCH 2021 | www.powerelectronicsnews.com                                                                                                                                         MARCH 2021 | www.powerelectronicsnews.com       11
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