Ricerc@Sapienza

This article deals with the design of a wireless powering system for a left ventricular assist device (LVAD). The modern LVAD is mainly a miniaturized blood pump attached to the heart and is driven by an electric motor powered by a cable driveline that exits the patient's body through the skin to be connected with an external battery. The driveline is a portal to the exterior environment and this can cause frequent and severe infections. The goal of this article is the elimination of the cable link between the interior and the exterior of the human body.

An innovative coil configuration for inductively-based wireless power transfer (WPT) technology is presented to recharge the battery of a compact unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) (i.e., a remotely controlled drone). To improve the tolerance of the WPT system to coil misalignment caused by imperfect landing, a large primary coil is proposed in combination with a single turn, secondary coil. The on-board secondary coil is integrated in a part of the drone used as protection of the propellers.

This study deals with the design of a wireless powering system for a left ventricular assist device (LVAD). The proposed system uses the wireless power transfer (WPT) technology based on the magnetic resonant coupling. For this kind of application two main aspects must be taken into account. First, the LVAD is implanted in the heart, so the power must be wirelessly transferred at a significant depth inside the human body. Second, the LVAD requires a much higher power than other active implantable medical devices (AIMDs) and for 24 hours per day, 365 days a year.

A near-field wireless power transfer (WPT) technology is applied to recharge the battery of a small size drone. The WPT technology is an extremely attractive solution to build an autonomous base station where the drone can land to wirelessly charge the battery without any human intervention. The innovative WPT design is based on the use of a mechanical part of the drone, i.e., landing gear, as a portion of the electrical circuit, i.e., onboard secondary coil.

A high power and high efficiency Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) system based on magnetic resonant coupling is proposed to automatically recharge the battery of a small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) (a remotely controlled drone). The drone is equipped with a WPT receiving (Rx) circular coil with an electronic system to control the battery charging process, while the WPT transmitting (Tx) circular coil is placed on a ground station and connected to the electric power feeding system.