For over ten years, our team has been engaged in the field of integrating communication with power electronics. In 2020, we published an article titled “ Nature of power electronics and integration of power conversion with communication for talkative power" in Nature Communications, which reveals that power electronics circuits have the potential to transmit information while simultaneously converting electrical power. This article highlights another feature of power electronics circuits: they can function as information modulators, facilitating the transmission of information through a medium-range wireless power transfer system. The abstract of the article is given below.

High-efficiency, medium-range wireless power transfer using magnetically coupled resonators requires a wireless data link between the contactless coils to regulate power. Multiplexing the power transfer channel as the information channel is a cost-effective solution for communication. However, existing technologies cannot transmit data across the medium-range magnetically coupled resonators channel without substantially affecting power transfer. Here we show a power-electronics-converters-based wireless power and information dual transfer system in which the information signals are modulated on one dc side of the inverter or rectifier, transmitted through a conventional medium-range wireless power transfer system, and then demodulated on the other dc side. Using the frequency mixer characteristic of the inverter or rectifier, information is modulated onto the sideband of the power carrier and transmitted through the medium-range channel.  Finally, we prototyped a 6.78 MHz system capable of transferring 45 watts of power across a one-meter distance with 62% efficiency and a 60 kb/s bitrate for half-duplex communication.

The benefits should be pointed out here with a few more words. The proposed wireless power and information dual transfer (WPIDT) system, which is different from conventional simultaneous wireless power and data transfer (SWPDT) technologies, multiplexes the WPT system as a communication channel, where the information is modulated on one dc end and demodulated on another dc end. This approach can serve as a universal method to achieve duplex communication between the two ends of the WPT system with high-frequency carriers.