IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics

Omnidirectional Magnetic Resonant Extender Design for Underwater Wireless Charging System
Tian X, Liu W, Chau KT and Goetz SM
Long-range underwater wireless power transfer (WPT) systems have great application prospects in many industrial fields. However, conventional WPT systems may suffer different kinds of technical issues in this highly unstable operation environment, such as large output decay when the transmission distance increases, and output fluctuation caused by instability of the water flows. To solve these problems, this paper proposes a novel solution to achieve an enlarged resonance range, higher efficiency, and more stable output. The compensation circuit is adopted in the system with a highly stable primary current, which improves its fault tolerance ability to adapt to the unstable underwater environment. A portable omnidirectional magnetic resonant extender is designed as an intermediate device to extend the underwater transmission distance and raise the system efficiency. The specially designed structure enables it with two separate but complementary three-coil WPT systems which solves the conventional angular dead zones issue. Theoretical analysis proves that under the idealized conditions, both the magnitude and phase of the load current can be effectively maintained as absolute constant, with arbitrary water flow direction or velocity. Both circuit simulation and finite element analysis (FEA) results are presented to validate that the system is possessed with high fault tolerance. For further assessment, an experimental prototype is established, and the practical test results confirm that the system can maintain a relatively high transmission efficiency under large lateral and angular misalignments ranging from -90° to +90°.
Detection and Identification of Cyber and Physical Attacks on Distribution Power Grids with PVs: An Online High-Dimensional Data-driven Approach
Li F, Xie R, Yang B, Guo L, Ma P, Shi J, Ye J and Song W
Cyber and physical attacks threaten the security of distribution power grids. The emerging renewable energy sources such as photovoltaics (PVs) introduce new potential vulnerabilities. Based on the electric waveform data measured by waveform sensors in the distribution power networks, in this paper, we propose a novel high-dimensional data-driven cyber physical attack detection and identification approach (HCADI). Firstly, we analyze the cyber and physical attack impacts (including cyber attacks on the solar inverter causing unusual harmonics) on electric waveforms in distribution power grids. Then, we construct a high dimensional streaming data feature matrix based on signal analysis of multiple sensors in the network. Next, we propose a novel mechanism including leverage score based attack detection and binary matrix factorization based attack diagnosis. By leveraging the data structure and binary coding, our HCADI approach does not need the training stage for both detection and the root cause diagnosis, which is needed for machine learning/deep learning-based methods. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first attempt to use raw electrical waveform data to detect and identify the power electronics cyber/physical attacks in distribution power grids with PVs.
Three-Phase Time-Multiplexed Planar Power Transmission to Distributed Implants
Lee B, Ahn D and Ghovanloo M
A platform has been presented for wireless powering of receivers (Rx's) that are arbitrarily distributed over a large area. A potential application could be powering of small Rx implants, distributed over large areas of the brain. The transmitter (Tx) consists of three overlapping layers of hexagonal planar spiral coils (hex-PSC) that are horizontally shifted to provide the strongest and most homogeneous electromagnetic flux coverage. The three-layer hex-PSC array is driven by a three-phase time-division-multiplexed power Tx that takes the advantage of the carrier phase shift, coil geometries, and Rx time constant to homogeneously power the arbitrarily distributed Rx's regardless of their misalignments. The functionality of the proposed three-phase power transmission concept has been verified in a detailed scaled-up high-frequency structure simulator Advanced Design System simulation model and measurement setup, and compared with a conventional Tx. The new Tx delivers 5.4 mW to each Rx and achieves, on average, 5.8% power transfer efficiency to the Rx at the worst case 90° angular misalignment, compared with 1.4% by the conventional Tx.
Power Loss Analysis and Comparison of Segmented and Unsegmented Energy Coupling Coils for Wireless Energy Transfer
Tang SC and McDannold NJ
This paper investigated the power losses of unsegmented and segmented energy coupling coils for wireless energy transfer. Four 30-cm energy coupling coils with different winding separations, conductor cross-sectional areas, and number of turns were developed. The four coils were tested in both unsegmented and segmented configurations. The winding conduction and intrawinding dielectric losses of the coils were evaluated individually based on a well-established lumped circuit model. We found that the intrawinding dielectric loss can be as much as seven times higher than the winding conduction loss at 6.78 MHz when the unsegmented coil is tightly wound. The dielectric loss of an unsegmented coil can be reduced by increasing the winding separation or reducing the number of turns, but the power transfer capability is reduced because of the reduced magnetomotive force. Coil segmentation using resonant capacitors has recently been proposed to significantly reduce the operating voltage of a coil to a safe level in wireless energy transfer for medical implants. Here, we found that it can naturally eliminate the dielectric loss. The coil segmentation method and the power loss analysis used in this paper could be applied to the transmitting, receiving, and resonant coils in two- and four-coil energy transfer systems.