Introduction to the Special Section on Contactless ... - IEEE Xplore

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 60, NO. 1, JANUARY 2013

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Introduction to the Special Section on Contactless Energy Transfer Systems

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ECENTLY, contactless energy transfer (CET) systems have been developed and investigated widely. These innovative technologies create new possibilities to supply mobile devices with electrical energy because the elimination of cables, connectors, and/or slip rings increases the reliability and enables maintenance-free operation of such critical systems as in aerospace, biomedical, and robotics applications. The general classification of CET systems can be performed based on the “medium” used for the CET: 1) electromagnetic waves including light; 2) acoustic waves (sound); 3) electric (capacitive) field; 4) magnetic (inductive) field. In the most popular applications, the core of a CET system is the inductive coupling between a power source and the load, using a high-switching-frequency power electronic converter to generate a magnetic field that provides the link. It is our pleasure to present this “Special Section on Contactless Energy Transfer Systems” of the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON I NDUS TRIAL E LECTRONICS , which has the goal to popularize and present the latest advances and developments in the design of modern CET systems. The review process of the submitted papers has been difficult because of the high scientific values of the majority of them. Due to space limitations, only about one-third of the submitted manuscripts could be accepted. Thus, we present 18 papers to the power electronics community with CET topics which can be grouped into the following categories: 1) a review paper on acoustic CET systems; 2) capacitive coupled CET systems; 3) novel control methods applied for CET systems: adaptive sliding mode, phase-locked loop based, etc.; 4) modern inductive coupled CET systems with uni- and bidirectional energy flow directions, multiple and individual users, etc.

We would like to thank all the authors that have contributed to this Special Section, and we hope that their contributions will be of interest to the industrial electronics community. Also, we are grateful to the reviewers, who endeavored to ensure that the papers included in this Special Section are of high quality. Finally, we would like to thank Prof. M.-Y. Chow, the Editorin-Chief of the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON I NDUSTRIAL E LEC TRONICS , for giving us the opportunity to organize this Special Section as well as Ms. S. McLain, Journal Administrator, for her continuous support.

J OHN T. B OYS, Guest Editor Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering The University of Auckland 1142 Auckland, New Zealand M ARIAN P. K AZMIERKOWSKI, Guest Editor Engineering Science Department Polish Academy of Sciences 02668 Warsaw, Poland E LENA A. L OMONOVA, Guest Editor Electromechanics and Power Electronics Group Eindhoven University of Technology MB5600 Eindhoven, The Netherlands U DAYA K. M ADAWALA, Guest Editor Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering The University of Auckland 1142 Auckland, New Zealand G RANT A. C OVIC, Guest Editor Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering The University of Auckland 1142 Auckland, New Zealand

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2012.2203489 0278-0046/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

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John T. Boys received the M.E. degree from The University of Auckland (UoA), Auckland, New Zealand, in 1965. After completing his Ph.D. studies, he was with SPS Technologies for five years before returning to academia as a Lecturer at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. He moved to Auckland in 1977 where he developed his work in power electronics. He is currently a Professor of electronics in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UoA, and the Cofounder of “HaloIPT.” He has published more than 100 papers in international journals and is the holder of more than 20 U.S. patents from which licenses in specialized application areas have been granted around the world. His special research areas are power electronics (he and Prof. G. A. Covic jointly head power electronics research) and inductive power transfer. Prof. Boys is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand and a Distinguished Fellow of the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand.

Marian P. Kazmierkowski (M’89–SM’91–F’98) received the M.S., Ph.D., and Dr. Sci. degrees in electrical engineering from the Institute of Control and Industrial Electronics (ICIE), Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland, in 1968, 1972, and 1981, respectively, the Honorary Doctorate degree from Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark, in 2004, and the Honorary Doctorate degree from the Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse, Toulouse, France, in 2010. Since 2003, he has been the Head of the Centre of Excellence on Power Electronics and Intelligent Control for Energy Conservation, ICIE, Warsaw University of Technology, where he was the Director of the ICIE from 1987 to 2008. He is also currently the Dean of the Engineering Science Department, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. Dr. Kazmierkowski was a recipient of the Dr.-Ing. Eugene Mittelmann Achievement Award from the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES) in 2005 and the SIEMENS Research Award in 2007. He was the Vice President of the IEEE IES (1999–2001) and the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON I NDUSTRIAL E LECTRONICS (2004–2006).

Elena A. Lomonova (M’04) was born in Moscow, Russia. She received the M.Sc. (cum laude) and Ph.D. (cum laude) degrees in electromechanical engineering from the Moscow State Aviation Institute (TU), Moscow, in 1982 and 1993, respectively. Since 2008, she has been the Chairman of the Electromechanics and Power Electronics Group, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, where she is also a full-time Professor. She has worked on electromechanical actuator design, optimization, and development of advanced mechatronics systems as well as contactless energy transfer.


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Udaya K. Madawala (M’93–SM’06) received the B.Sc.(Hons.) degree in electrical engineering from The University of Moratuwa, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, in 1987, and the Ph.D. degree in power electronics from The University of Auckland (UoA), Auckland, New Zealand, in 1993. After working in industry, in 1997, he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UoA, where he is currently an Associate Professor. He is a Consultant to industry and is the holder of a number of patents. His research interests are in the fields of power electronics, inductive power transfer, and renewable energy. Dr. Madawala is an active IEEE volunteer and serves as an Associate Editor for both the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON I NDUSTRIAL E LECTRONICS and IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON P OWER E LECTRONICS. He is a member of the Power Electronics Technical Committee and also the Chairman of the Joint Chapter of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society and IEEE Industrial Applications Society in New Zealand (North).

Grant A. Covic (S’88–M’89–SM’04) received the B.E. (Hons.) and Ph.D. degrees from The University of Auckland (UoA), Auckland, New Zealand, in 1986 and 1993, respectively. He became a full-time Lecturer in 1992, a Senior Lecturer in 2000, and an Associate Professor in 2007 in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UoA. In 2010, he cofounded (with Prof. John T. Boys) a new global start-up company “HaloIPT” focusing on electric vehicle charging infrastructure. They jointly currently head power electronics research at the UoA. His research and consulting interests include power electronics, electric vehicle battery charging, and inductive (contactless) power transfer from which he has published more than 100 refereed papers in international journals and conference proceedings. He is also the holder of a number of licensed U.S. patents with many more pending in this field.