IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMSI: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 62, NO. 1, JANUARY 2015
I. INTRODUCTION
location misses the strong signal required for effective communication. Thus, to receive optimal power, the receiver should
tune to either or both of the split frequencies. Consequently, this
paper applies the splitting behavior to the models of single input
multiple outputs (SIMO), multiple inputs single input (MISO)
and multiple inputs multiple outputs (MIMO) to diversify the
frequencies and channels of communications.
The non-radiative WPT in [1] has not only triggered research
of contactless energy transfers [3][6] but also of magnetic induction (MI) communications such as underwater applications
[7], [8], body area network [9], [10] and Internet of things [11].
Many well designed modulation methods have used a single
channel in uni-direction or bi-direction at resonant frequency.
These modulation schemes have included on-off keying (OOK)
[10], [12], load shift keying [13], amplitude shift keying, frequency shift keying [14], [15], QPSK [16], pulse harmonic modulation [17] and recently direct antenna modulation [18]. However, their work has not yet been demonstrated for multiple communication systems and designs operate at one frequency. By
adding more resonators to the transmitter and receiver, Macro
et al. [19], [20] study the dual band and multiple band resonant frequency separations for wireless power transfer and data
communication. The multiple frequencies are created from different internal RLC circuits, which make the system configuration complicated. Furthermore, their work is established for
a single input and single out (SISO) system. Recently, Dukju
Ahn and Songcheol Hong investigate the effects of coupling efficiency on the resonant frequency in [21], [22]. Their work is
successful in tuning the frequency to increase the efficiency and
power transfer of multiple coil systems. Nevertheless, the use of
splitting mode behaviors for multiple frequencies has not been
considered for communications. Therefore, in this project we
propose the design of the flux coupling conditions for multiple
frequencies. The degrees of coupling condition provide multiple
communications and enhance the system capacity.
As mentioned by [23], at a close proximity between the receivers, the system transfer function manifests several peaks at
the mode splitting frequencies. Nonetheless, [23] does not investigate the effects of coupling between the transmitters and
between transmitter-receivers. Several studies [21], [24], [25]
discuss the use of coupling in the MIMO configuration to maximize the power transfer, efficiency, and channel characterization
of systems. Yet, [21], [24], [25] do not research the degree of
couplings as the sources of multiple frequency transmissions in
MIMO system to transfer data, which is addressed in our paper.
The work presented in this paper lays claim to the following
contributions:
1549-8328 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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303
(2)
The relationship between the power transfer in (2) and the frequency response at different given level of k is plotted in Fig. 2.
It can be seen that at strong coupling (close distance), the power
transfer of the circuit peaks at two frequencies. The position of
frequency change is defined by the critical coupling coefficient
condition as
[26]. The double peaks in
Fig. 2 are referred to as the splitting frequencies of the circuit,
which are calculated as the odd or even frequency in [26], [27]
and
. This formula clearly
explains the shift of splitting frequency when the coupling coefficient varies. Furthermore, the separation of two peaks is determined by the increasing of the coupling coefficient. Consequently, at a variable gap between two coils and under strong
coupling, multiple frequencies are created from the splitting
frequency. We will use this concept for analyzing the splitting
mode of multiple transmitters and receivers.
B. Single Transmitter and Multiple Receiver Configuration
Fig. 3 presents a transmitter and N receivers. Each receiver
is coupled with a transmitter by the individual coupling coefficients
. The cross-couplings between the receivers are named
and
). It is
shown in [21] that under strong coupling and high Q, the circuit
analyses of each loop in the transmitter and N receivers can be
identified by the following matrix equation:
A. Single Transmitter-Receiver
A single MI system can be represented by the RLC lumped
circuit theory as in Fig. 1, where the source and destination coils
with radii and respectively transfer energy wirelessly over
the distance x. Based on Kirchhoffs voltage law (KVL), the
AC source voltage across the transmitting and receiving circuit
is governed by the following equation:
(1)
inducing
where, the circuit is excited by the input voltage
current
and
in the first and second loops. The impedances of the transmitter and receiver are
and
,
respectively. The mutual inductance
between them is related to their self inductance by means of the coupling coeffi-
..
.
..
.
..
.
(3)
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMSI: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 62, NO. 1, JANUARY 2015
Fig. 6. Power efficiency for one transmitter and two receivers in 3-D view. (a)
is without cross-coupling and (b) is with cross-coupling.
Fig. 5. Multiple transmitters and multiple receivers.
matrix below:
(4)
, the matrix A in (4) can give
By solving for the factor
maximum of three eigenvalues corresponding to the three splitting frequencies. However, these values depend on the value of
coupling coefficients. Thus, in the following analysis we define
the two cases of splitting frequency with and without cross-coupling.
Without cross-coupling
Case 1: when
, three splitting frequencies
are obtained from (4) as:
(5)
Case 2: when
, another three frequencies are
also yielded as:
(6)
Equation (6) is similar to the work in [22]. However, the author introduces the splitting frequency for another model.
With cross-coupling
Case 1: when
, there are two
splitting frequencies as:
(7)
Case 2: when
frequencies is calculated as:
..
.
..
.
..
.
..
.
..
.
(10)
, three splitting
,
and
.
Case 1 and 2 above show that the system generates three splitting frequencies instead of two frequencies when the cross-coupling is unequally coupled, because matrix A in (3) gives three
eigenvalues.
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Fig. 7. Even and odd mode splitting frequencies of two and three transmitters.
Fig. 8. Three dimentional plot of the power transfer and the contour of the even
and odd frequencies at the 90% efficiency is shown for two transmitters and two
receivers with/without cross-coupling.
Fig. 9. Two peaks in the spectrum show a good match in both models.
TABLE I
SPLITTING FREQUENCIES FOR 1TX-2RX AND 2TX-1RX MODELS
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMSI: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 62, NO. 1, JANUARY 2015
coefficients are
and
for both 1Tx-2Rx (red
line) and 2Tx-1Rx (blue line) models.
IV. MAGNETIC COMMUNICATION BASED ON CHIRP
Because multiple splitting frequencies are found as the variable distance of multiple transmitters/receivers, adaptive frequency tracking is required for this phenomenon. One way to
achieve this scheme is to use a chirp signal to transfer and spread
the data. A chirp refers to a signal in which the frequency vary
with time. Therefore, we can use Chirps to transfer the data at
any splitting frequencies. Chirps also help to identify the mode
of splitting frequency and thus to identify the distance between
the transmitter and receiver. In our models, the binary phase
chirp modulation is based on the theory of a chirp spread spectrum in [28], [29]. The following discussion introduces the techniques of the chirp modulation and demodulation for our design.
A. Linear Binary Chirp Modulation
The min and max frequency of the chirp is chosen within the
band of multiple splitting frequencies calculated from the coupling coefficient
. In our paper, the chirp
signal is designed to operate from 5 MHz to 55 MHz and 20
KHz to 89 KHz, which are used with the original resonant frequencies of 13.56 MHz and 28 KHz, respectively. This spectral
band also covers the frequencies within coupling coefficients
. The block diagram of the modulator and demodulator in Matlab simulink is illustrated in Fig. 10. In the
modulator, transmitted data are introduced from a Random Integer generator and the data rates are spread by the wideband
of the chirp signal. The chirp signal is created inside the transmitter block and its phase is also changed 180 accordingly to
the binary bit 1 and 0 of transmitted data. In the demodulator, the received signal from MI models is also multiplied with
an identical chirp. Next, it is filtered by the integrated block and
compared to a given threshold (0.01) to produce the data. The
simulation shows the similar transmitted data, modulated signal,
received signal and converted data as the experimental results
exhibited in Fig. 16.
B. BER Performance
Normally, in RF engineering, the received signal contains additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). The noise comes from
the effects of the environment or multi path signals before the
signal is acquired at the demodulator block [28]. The interference noise of MI communication could be from the different
transmission media [7], [8], [30] or metallic objects [31]. In our
models, the AWGN noise power is added. The probability of
bit error between the transmitted and received data is plotted
in Fig. 11. The BER performance of three coupling coefficients
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307
Fig. 14. Modulator parameters at clock rate of 20 ns and a real chirp signal.
Fig. 12. Experimental system.
are reported when the chirp signal uses the spectral band of 69
KHz.
TABLE II
TRANSMITTER AND RECEIVER COMPONENTS
V. HARDWARE IMPLEMENTATION
MI communication using chirp signals is implemented in
two parts for separating the design and verification. The digital
design contains the internal chip modulator while the analog
design includes a digital-to-analog (DAC), class A amplifier
and MI models. Fig. 12 displays our prototype board and
measurement setup with an embedded development platform
Xilinx Spartan 3 [32], [33].
A. Implemented FPGA Modulator
The chirp binary modulator is developed by VHDL and its
implementation in a FPGA. The software program uses the ISE
project navigator in conjunction with the ISE simulator to provide the verification of the design. The RTL schematic of the
modulator contains the Digital Clock Manager (DCM), the internal data_gen, chirp generator and the DAC controller block
as in Fig. 13. Four programs are coded separately according to
these four blocks. The DCM block generates the 100 MHz fast
sampling clock from the 50 MHz external clock. An internal
random binary number is generated from an N stage shift register. Inside the BPSK block, a look-up-table for the chirp signal
is created. The wideband chirp signal is calculated with the design based on the odd and even frequencies of a single transmitter-receiver, since its separation band is wider than others.
The design used 58 of the 12000 slice register, 14% of the
LUT and 8 input-output pins of the FPGA. The synthesis and
behavior of the design are provided in Fig. 14. The dac_cs,
dac_clr, spi_clk and spi_mosi signals are the SPI controller interface to DAC chip in analog part. The data_in is a 12-bit unsigned digital value, which equivalents the chirp signal. Fig. 14
shows that at the active low of the dac_cs, the modulator transmits data on the spi_mosi signal and DAC captures this input
data on the rising edge of the spi_clk clock signal. Each data
value, for example number 4095 in Fig. 14, takes 64 clock cycles of the spi_clk. For a given chirp signal, there are 1024 data
Fig. 15. Class A amplifier at transmitter and receiver circuit. Hardware boards
are in Fig. 12.
points in the LUT. Therefore, the chirp duration is 660 . Further details of the SPI bus timing and controller protocol can be
found in [32]. Moreover, the experimental results in Section VI
have clearly demonstrated and validated the proof of concept
for chirp modulator and MI multi-channel communications.
B. Antenna Design
The transmitter and receiver antennas are required to have
a high quality factor (Q) at the particular frequency of interest.
For this reason, large inductances and low loss resistances of the
antennas are needed, since the effective Q of the coils is presented as
. Consequently, single layer circular air cored
coils are created. The enameled copper wire 100 AWG with a
width of 0.8 mm is hand wound with 25 turns and a diameter of
8 cm. Table II shows the component values of the antennas in
the transmitters and receivers.
C. DAC and Class A Amplifier
The on-board four channel DAC LTC2624 is used to convert
a 12 bit unsigned decimal value from the digital part into the
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Fig. 16. (a) is 1Tx-2Rx and (b) is 2Tx-1R. Chirp modulated signal is from 20 KHz to 89 KHz.
Section III. The last waveforms in Fig. 16 are the receiver data
using the demodulator block (Fig. 10) in Section IV. Although,
our models work at strong coupling coefficients, the receiver
voltage still receives only one envelope in the case of weak coupling at distances of 10 cm. In other words, the same system can
be used in weak coupling applications.
Table III shows the comparison between recent published
modulation scheme results in a near field, and our design. Characteristics of the modulation schemes in the SISO system can
be found in [17], [35]. It is observed that most of these designs
are based on a single band of the carrier resonant frequency, instead of the wideband carrier in our system. The system capacity
for our design can be estimated using the Shannons equation
. Where
is the bandwidth of the channel. The theoretical maximum system capacity
is determined by the signal and the noise power in the channel.
With coding, a greater capacity can be achieved. A practical capacity of each channel using the above equation and
is 69 Kbps per split frequency mode. Thus, with the two split
frequencies 138 Kbps is obtained. More split frequency modes
result to multi-channel data rates, a significant improvement
on single resonant schemes in current literature. Additionally,
our proposed design can be applied for a higher frequency as
shown in Section III and mathematical equation in Section II.
At any resonant frequency, the proportion of
is a unit-free
value. In simulation, we have also performed at the frequency
from 5 MHz to 55 MHz. The approach for this 50 MHz spectral band is similar to that of the 69 KHz band. Therefore, the
capacity is yielded as 50 Mbps of each channel per split frequency mode. In our implementation, the system capacity per
channel is limited by the ability of the Spartan-III FPGA to provide the required clock frequency and a slew rate of 0.8
in the on-board DAC chip. With a higher specification FPGA
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TABLE III
MODULATION COMPARISON
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Hoang Nguyen received the M.E. degree in communication from La Trobe University, Melbourne,
Australia, in 2003, where he is currently working
toward the Ph.D. degree in electronics and communication engineering. From 2003 to 2011, he
worked at Vietnam Telecom International where
he was a project manager participating in design,
development and implement of VoIP network, VSAT
network, contact centre, voice, Internet, VPN, Lease
line, video conferencing, mobile trunking over
VSAT Network, signaling transfer protocol and Next