I'm about to star my thesis on wireless charging. I want to develop a system for a smart city, where there are many stations for electric vehicles (cars,buses,drones e.t.c.) to charge in order to travel longer distances. I want to use inductive charging because, firstly "smart city" and secondly for the convenience of disabled people.(electric wheelchairs batteries today can last for up to 8 hours, which is pretty good but it still separates them from society).
Before i start working on this, i found that wireless charging using radio waves via rectena now can charge cellphones up to 12 meters! I need some advice on which mean from the two i should work (basically please tell me if charging an electric car by using radio raves sounds stupid).
You need to assess that yourself.
Look at the power that would be required to charge a car and what rf power density would be needed at the rectentenna and how this (and sidelobes and reflection from the rectentenna) compares to the ICNIRP limits for exposure to non-ionising radiation. For instance.
The EVs need a high power to charge their batteries. If the radio waves carry such a high power that will cause serious danger for human beings. So, this methodology is not viable. The inductive and capacitive wireless power transfer technologies (IPT and CPT) are viable. There is a new technology that emerged recently by combining the IPT and CPT together. You can get a piece of great knowledge about these topics on my researchgate page where I had done so much research about these topics.
Good luck
Hi Spyros,
Your ideas definitely are not stupid at all. They sound great to me. In terms of their feasibility and related implementation, YES, it is doable and has been commercially implemented already.
For example, many years ago, Qualcomm implemented Halo high power wireless charging system for EVs. But how about the market? We don't know.
Also Prof. Mohammed Al-Saadi, he has a good point on the challenges of your ideas. The problem he mentioned is related to "Foreign Object Detection" issue. There are many ways to solve it.
BTW, there is a review paper as well from IEEE.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/advanced-cars/wireless-charging-tech-to-keep-evs-on-the-go
