ITEC Asia-Pacific 2014 1569950639

Research on Positioning Technique of Wireless

Power Transfer System for Electric Vehicles
Chen Shuwei1,2, Liao Chenglin1 and Wang Lifang1

1. Key Laboratory of Power Electronics and Electrical Drives, Institute of Electrical Engineering, CAS, Beijing 100190, China
2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
E-mail: chenshuwei@mail.iee.ac.cn
liaocl@mail.iee.ac.cn
wlf@mail.iee.ac.cn

Abstract-- The relative position of the energy transmitting coil while applicated for electric vehicles charging. Thus
and the energy receiving coil has a great influence on the misalignment between the two coils often takes place. Coil
transfer efficiency of the wireless power transfer systems. The
transfer efficiency has a marked fall when the two coils are misalignment may cause significant impact on the transfer
misaligned. Thus it is important to know the exactly position of efficiency of inductive WPT system and may lead to system
the two coils to achieve high system efficiency. This paper instability of magnetic resonant WPT system[2]. The
focuses on the positioning solution for guiding the electric schematic of the WPT system is shown in Fig.1.
vehicles to the charging area and ensuring the alignment of the Studies in [3] show that mutual inductance between
two coils. This solution is based on the RFID(radio frequency
identification) technique and combined with the magnetic field inductive WPT coils drops sharply when coil misalignment
coupling method to achieve high accuracy and large scale in increases. Perfect alignment between coils is required to keep
positioning. The RFID is considered as one of the most the transferred power within the desired limits[4].
preferable ways for the position estimation in indoor and local At present, few works have been done on the positioning of
environment. The positioning system calculates the real-time the WPT sytem for electric vehicles charging. There are some
position of the vehicle in the parking area. Then the position
signal is sent to the screem to show the driver where the car different systems can be used to detect the optimal position to
actually is. When the two coils are well aligned, the wireless stop the electric vehicles, such as camera systems, optical
power transfer system can start charging the vehicle. systems, mechanical systems, radio based systems and Global
Keywords--positioning, wireless power transfer, RFID, electric Positioning System(GPS). Nevertheless, these solutions have
vehicles. the several disadvantages such as they are influenced by dust,
dirt, obstacles and weather conditions. In comparison with
common indoor or local positioning systems mentioned
I. INTRODUCTION above, RFID(radio frequency identification) is the best choice
for indoor and local positioning as it gives equal attention to
Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) is a hot pursuing topic for both accuracy and cost[5].
research institutions and a promising technology which can The studies on indoor or local positioning based on RFID
be applied in many areas, such as electric vehicles charging, mainly apply four kinds of methods, which are Time of
implantable device charging[1]. Inductive coupling and Arrival(TOA), Time Difference of Arrival(TDOA), Received
magnetic resonant coupling are two major means of wireless Signal Strength(RSS), and Angle of Arrival(AOA). Of these,
power transfer. In both of them, power is transferred from a RSS is most suitable for local positioning in terms of both
transmit coil to a receive coil via magnetic field. Generally, cost and accuracy; however, RFID signal strength lacks
the two coils need to be well aligned to make the system stability, thus, major errors still exist, even though RSS is
work at its best state to achieve the highest transfer efficiency. widely adopted [6].
However, it is difficult to stop the car at the accurate position This paper proposed a positioning system based on the
RFID technique and combined with the magnetic field
coupling method.

II. REVIEW OF RFID TECHNIQUE

A. RFID system
The radio frequency procedure is based upon LC resonant
Fig. 1. Schematic of the WPT system circuits adjusted to a defined resonant frequency. The

1
 The Euclidian distance in signal strength for each tracking
tag p(p (1,u) ) is calculated as[12]:
n
2
Ej (T S )
i 1
i i , j (1, m) (3)

E j is the distance in signal strength between a tracking tag

and reference tag. E denotes the location relationship
between the reference tags and the tracking tag . The E value
is smaller means the distance between the reference tag and
the tracking tag is nearer. The nearest neighbor algorithm is
Fig. 2. The operating principle of radio frequency procedure. used with k nearest reference tags coordinates to locate one
unknown tag. The unknown tracking tag coordinate is
operating principle of the radio frequency procedure is shown obtained by
in Fig.2. The reader generates a magnetic field in the radio k
frequency range via the generator coil. If the LC resonant ( x, y ) wi ( xi , yi ) (4)
circuit is moved into the vicinity of the magnetic field, energy i 1
can be induced in the resonant circuit via its coils. Then the
current flows in the resonant circuit and it acts against the wi is the weighting factor to the i-th neighboring reference
external magnetic field[7]. Tags are the data carrier and tag. The nearest neighbor reference tag has a largest w
antenna is the medium for the spread of the data.The reader value. wi is a function of E values of k nearest neighbors. It
receives the data transferred from tags and then decrypts the
data to calculate the distance and position of the mobile depends on the E value of each reference tag in the cell.
objects. The wi is given by:
1
B. RFID positioning algorithm
The RFID positioning algorithm based on RSS(Received Ei2
wi k (5)
Signal Strength) is commonly used for some applications by 1
reason of simple implementation. Especially, LANDMARC
i 1 Ei
2
is the location-sensing prototype system for better accuracy[8]
and prove that RSS based method is a viable cost-effective The location estimation error is obtained by:
solution[9]. The major advantage of LANDMARC is that it
improves the overall accuracy of locating objects by utilizing e ( x x0 )2 ( y y0 )2 (6)
the concept of reference tags[10]. The LANDMARC
positioning system defines the geometric distance ( x0 , y0 ) is the tracking tags real coordinates and ( x, y )
relationship by the received signal strength with the nearest is the computed coordinates[13].
neighbor algorithm.
Theoretically, when one tag which need to be located is
close to a reference tag, their received signal strength value III. POSITIONING SYSTEM DESIGN
frome the same RFID reader may be adjacent[11]. Suppose
the positioning system have n RFID readers along with m A. RFID positioning system
tags and u tracking tags as objects being tracked. The signal The RFID positioning system has two components: a RFID
strength vector of a tracking tag can be defined as: reader(integrated with a circularly polarized antenna), and a

S ( S1 , S2 , S3 , , S n ) (1)

Where Si denotes the signal strength of the tracking tag

perceived on reader i(i=1,2,,n), and Ti denotes the signal
strength of the reference tag perceived on reader i(i=1,2,,n).
The signal strength vector of the reference tag can be defined
as:

T (T1 , T2 , T3 , , Tn ) (2)
Fig. 3. RFID positioning system prototype. The black dots represent RFID
tags. The broken circle represent the signal coverd area of the antenna.

2
number of RFID tags[14]. As shown in Fig.3, the RFID
reader is placed above the ground to transmit radio frequency
signal in order that all the tags in this positioning area can
receive the signal. The tracking tag is attached on the mobile
target such as the electric vehicle, indoor moving robot or
other moving objects. Usually the reader has a height of H
above the floor. The reference tags are laid on the floor of the
parking lot or other charging area. The distance between each
tag should be calculated previously. Each tags location is
stored in advance at the database in association with its tag ID.
When the electric vehicle is approaching the parking lot for
charging at a velocity of v, the RFID reader transmit the radio
frequency signal at a frequency of f . It has a circular reading
range tr and covers several RFID tags. These tags receive the
signal and reflect the signal to the reader. The tracking tag on
the electric vehicle also receives the radio frequency signal.
Thus the reader can access the tags location through the tag
ID and the distance between the reader and the tag can be
calculated by the received signal strength indicator. Then the
LANDMARC positioning algorithm is used to estimate the
location. When there are more than three distances between
the reader and location known tags, the position of tracking
Fig. 4. Module components of the RFID positioning system.
Fig. 5. Placement of RFID readers and tags. The grey dots represent
reference tags and the black dot represents tracking tag. The dark blocks
represent RFID reader.
3
tag can be calculated through the LANDMARC positioning
method. Then the positioning system can guide the driver to
stop the car on the designated spot.
The module components of the RFID positioning system is
shown in Fig.4. The RFID reader transfer the scanned data of
the tags to the embeded computer through the RS232
interface. The computer access and process the data with the
positioning system LANDMARC-nearest neighbor algorithm.
Different positioning algorithms, different tag density and
different signal cover range may result in different positional
accuracy and realtime performance. When the position of the
car is confirmed, it will be displayed on the monitoring screen
to tell the driver where the car is and guide the driver to drive
the car to the designated spot carefully and slowly.
The placement of the reference tags in our positioning
system is illustrated in Fig.5. We assume that we have two
RFID readers placed at positions shown in Fig.5. The
distance between reference tags d is defined as 1.0 m. The
tracking tag is placed on the area randomly. Then we
generate the coordinate of the tracking tag and calculate the
location estimation error. The result shows that the
LANDMARC algorithm has a nice accuracy.
B. Positioning process combine the RFID and magnetic
method
The positioning process of the elcetric vehicle is shown in
Fig.6. When the electric vehicle is approaching the parking
lot, the RFID positioning system work and guide the car to
the designated spot. The system uses the signals and position
data of the tags on the floor for the position calculation of the
parking electric vehicle and analyzes the signal quality. The
positioning algorithm requires the used antenna and tags has
an optimal radiation in each direction and a fast responding
time. But sometimes the LANDMARC system shows bad
performance for fluctuation. This may result in declining of
the position accuracy.
The magnetic resonant coupled WPT antennas can also be
used to positioning. Power pattern at different displacement
of the antennas is different. So we build an experimental
model presenting the relationship between the received power
and lateral coil distance. To calculate and control the
receiving antenna position, received power gradient, the
Power Line
Fig. 6. The positioning process of the electric vehicle. The grey area is the
RFID positioning area, and the orange area is the magnetic positioning area.
differential of received voltage waveform amplitude (A)
with respect to position (d), dA/dd, is used as the reference
signal. When the car moves, we detect the received power
and then we can get the position of the car through the
relationship between the received power and the coil distance.
Due to the small position area, the magnetic field coupling
method only works when the car is very close to the
designated spot. The magnetic method can reach a high
positioning precision although the range of magnetic
positioning is small. So when the car comes into the magnetic
area, the positioning system swithes the positioning
algorithms from the RFID method to the magnetic method.
The system generate a signal to start the magnetic resonant
coupled antenna. At the same time, the RFID system still
works to assist the positioning process.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper we have designed a positioning system used
on wireless power transfer system for EV. The technique of
RFID positioning system is researched in this paper. The
fundamental principles of the RFID technique and the
algorithm of the RFID positioning method are presented.
Efforts on magnetic coupling method is also discussed. We
have worked out the method to combine the two positioning
methods. The proposed positioning approach has be validated
by experiments result. The final positioning system
combining the RFID system and the magnetic method has
achieve a high positioning precision and realtime
performance.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was supported by the Beijing Municipal
Science and Technology Program (D121100004512001). The
authors would like to express appreciations to colleagues in
our laboratory for their valuable helps.
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