WiPoTS: An Application Layer Protocol With Network Protocol Stack Enhancements For Wireless Power Transfer Networks

Abstract

Abstract Nowadays, a far-field wireless power transfer (WPT) system aims to deliver wireless power over a distance of a few meters. Communication among devices for the purpose of WPT in the far-field WPT system is unique as its purpose is to establish, maintain and monitor a WPT session among devices in the system. For proper functionality of a WPT system, a number of communication-, control- and management-related challenges need to be addressed. Hence, here an application layer protocol specifically designed for a WPT system is presented. The protocol provides essential control, management and communication functionalities to establish, maintain and monitor a WPT session. Some features of a WPT system require low-latency communication, hence enhancements for a networking protocol stack are also proposed. To validate the effectiveness of the presented application layer protocol along with the enhancements proposed for the networking protocol stack, a set of experiments was carried out over a real WPT system. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed protocol possesses the features essential for a WPT system, and the proposed enhancements for the networking protocol stack provide low-latency communication along with lower control overhead compared with an existing state-of-the-art network protocol stack.