Design of a misalignment-tolerant wireless charging system based on multidimensional cross-coupling for autonomous underwater vehicles

In this paper, a misalignment-tolerant wireless charging system based on multidimensional cross-coupling for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) is proposed. The four transmitting coils of the proposed system magnetic coupler are divided evenly into two pairs as bipolar transmitting units. Subsequently, the uniform multi-dimensional horizontal magnetic flux can be obtained by two current vectors with a 90 degrees phase difference exciting in the bipolar transmitting units. For the receiver, a couple of orthogonal coils are designed to form cross-coupling with the transmitter to pick up the maximum magnetic flux. Then, the proposed magnetic coupler combined with the proposed transmitter and receiver is designed through finite element analysis. Finally, a 900 W prototype is built and tested. Experimental results show that the system has stable output characteristics in the ranges of a - 20 degrees to 20 degrees rolling misalignment and a - 30 to 30 mm axial misalignment.