Design of a Contactless Energy-Transfer System for Desktop Peripherals

This paper presents an approach to design a contactless energy-transfer system to supply desktop computer peripherals. Energy is transferred using coreless transformers from an array of primary coils (placed on a table) to one or several secondary coils (placed under the peripheral). Knowing the geometrical structure of the coils of a coreless transformer, accurate calculations allow predicting the power that can be transferred to a load. By applying these calculations to one basic energy-transfer cell, it is then possible to design a whole table that is able to supply many consumers at any location. The main problem with such systems is that the energy transfer is not constant along the surface and may not be even enough to supply an electronic device. This paper proposes several solutions to solve this problem.