Far-Field Wireless Power Beaming to Mobile Receivers Using Distributed, Coherent Phased Arrays: A Review of the Critical Components of a Distributed Wireless Power Beaming System
Ifana Mahbub, Adnan Basir Patwary, Rafsan Mahin, Sunanda Roy
Abstract
Over the last few decades, far-field RF-based wireless power beaming (WPB) has been a topic of interest for the microwave and the antenna engineering communities alike, and there have been quite a few articles published in the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">IEEE Microwave Magazine</i> related to this topic in the last 20 years, which is evidence of the high interest of the community. This interest is likely due to the dire need for such a system for applications, ranging from biomedicine to drone charging <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref1" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[1]</xref> , <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref2" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[2]</xref> , <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref3" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[3]</xref> , <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref4" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[4]</xref> , <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="ref5" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">[5]</xref> . While these prior published articles have been a great resource for new researchers in this area, who can gather tons of resources and information by reading these articles, we (the authors of this article) realized a comprehensive review is still lacking, where the challenges and opportunities regarding WPB to dynamically and rapidly moving targets [e.g., unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)] using multiple, distributed transmitters (TXs) are summarized and discussed in detail. We envision that the next generation of wireless power transfer (WPT) networks will be scalable, safe, and efficient, enabling a robust RF energy web that can be deployed using mobile autonomous platforms, such as unmanned aerial systems, as depicted in <xref ref-type="fig" rid="fig1" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Figure 1</xref> .