Overview and Comparative Assessment of Single-Phase Power Converter Topologies of Inductive Wireless Charging Systems

Abstract

The acquisition of inductive power transfer (IPT) technology in commercial electric vehicles (EVs) alleviates the inherent burdens of high cost, limited driving range, and long charging time. In EV wireless charging systems using IPT, power electronic converters play a vital role to reduce the size and cost, as well as to maximize the efficiency of the overall system. Over the past years, significant research studies have been conducted by researchers to improve the performance of power conversion systems including the power converter topologies and control schemes. This paper aims to provide an overview of the existing state-of-the-art of power converter topologies for IPT systems in EV charging applications. In this paper, the widely adopted power conversion topologies for IPT systems are selected and their performance is compared in terms of input power factor, input current distortion, current stress, voltage stress, power losses on the converter, and cost. The single-stage matrix converter based IPT systems advantageously adopt the sinusoidal ripple current (SRC) charging technique to remove the intermediate DC-link capacitors, which improves system efficiency, power density and reduces cost. Finally, technical considerations and future opportunities of power converters in EV wireless charging applications are discussed.