Long-Range Wireless Power Drive Using Magnetic Extender

This article proposes and implements a long-range wireless power drive (WPD) system using a magnetic extender, which can be promisingly applied in underground pipeline transportations and in-pipe robots. Generally, the underground pipeline transportation networks usually rely on the power grid and control system to regulate the flow rate. Nonetheless, such wired pipeline networks mainly suffer from increasing the construction cost, maintenance difficulty, and system complexity. By using pulse frequency modulation, the development of the proposed long-range WPD enables a wireless pipeline network for flow rate regulation, which has the advantages of robust structure and reduced maintenance requirements. With the addition of a designed magnetic extender, the circuit network can offer an excellent fault tolerance capability for underground sensor-free WPD while maintaining a high transmission efficiency. Significantly, the use of a magnetic extender will cause no inconvenience thanks to its underground deployment. Accordingly, the system efficiency of a full-scale prototype can reach around 89.1% for the meter-range WPD. Theoretical analysis, computational simulation, and prototype experimentation are given to verify the feasibility of the proposed long-range WPD using a magnetic extender.