Wireless Power – New Steps from MIT

Last year I blogged on wireless power which used the technique of vibrating a piezoelectric circuit with an ultrasonic wave and converting that circuit vibration into mechanical power to charge a battery. A player in this field appears to be Powercast which doesn’t define clearly their technology but appears to use the piezo crystal technique.

Splashpower is a commercial example using magnetic coupling to transfer energy through wireless means. Implementations of this sort require near contact of the device and vibration source.

MIT now has a technique using two magnetic coils to create what is similar to magnetic inductive coupling. The difference is that the MIT solution uses resonance to transfer the energy. By using two coils that have the same resonate frequency they are able to transfer power through the air. In this case they are using a 10 MHz frequency to transfer over a distance of two meters.

While the efficiency is far from commercial in its application it highlights an area of research worth pursuing. It’ll be interesting to see where they take this.

Best regards,
Hall T.