Wireless Power Transfer has welcomed new Executive Editors Patrick Hu, University of Auckland, New Zealand and Naoki Shinohara, Kyoto University, Japan as well as editorial board members Alessandra Costanzo, University of Bologna, Italy and Chunhua Liu, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong to the journal. We asked these new team members about what drew them to the subject and journal in the latest WPT Q&A

Cambridge Core Blog: What originally drew you to, or excites you about, wireless power transfer?

Alessandra Costanzo: At the beginning I was very interested in systems to exploit RF signals available in humanized ambient and harvest them to power up small low-power distributed devices. I was able to develop an integrated procedure combining electromagnetic and nonlinear simulation to design end-to-end WPT systems simultaneously include the RF circuits, as well as the radio channel and the antenna. This allowed me to propose original multi-band rectenna solutions realized in both standard materials and in non-conventional ones, such as textiles. I have been also working with the near-field technique for WPT and I found very interesting relationships between the near- and far-field WPT, which were previously considered by separate communities.

Patrick Hu: Electric power has always been fascinating to me. I wondered how electric bulbs can light up without oils when I was a boy, so I chose to study electrical engineering to understand it. And when I was doing my PhD at Xian Jiaotong Univ on power system monitoring and control under the supervision of Prof Jianhua Wang, I wondered whether it’s possible to transfer power wirelessly without using transmission or distribution lines, and I was delighted to find Prof John Boys was already doing it in the University of Auckland! As a result I transferred to Auckland and completed my PhD study on wireless power transfer.

Liu Chunhua: Actually, my group is keeping the research areas on electrified propulsion systems and electrified devices for industry and applications. Of course, the cordless way has an obvious convenience for electricity utilization. And we have explored the wireless power transfer (WPT) technology for various applications, including home appliances, electric vehicles, aircraft charging, city trams, etc.. We believe that the WPT technology can help our life more conveniently.

CCB: Among current researchers, whose papers do you look forward to reading?

AC: There are many authors whose research I am interested in, particularly those developing low and ultra-low power applications to enable operation of battery-less wireless sensors. In particular I like the works from Prof. Tentzeris and Prof. Carvalho groups on the exploitation of backscattering modulation, combined with battery-less systems and on the exploitation of new materials and 3D printing techniques.

Naoki Shinohara: I look forward to reading a paper of Backscatter RF-ID and WPT by Prof.
Nuno Borges Carvalho. I also look foward to reading a paper of RF-ID and WPT by Prof. Luca Roselli. Prof. Ke Wu and Prof. Kohei Shimamura can show us a very interesting papers of rectifiers on millimeter wave and THz. Concerning a beam-type WPT, I expect Prof. Hubregt J. Visser and Dr. Long Xiao.
Dr. John Ho’s technology of WPT medical applications is very exciting.
Prof. Qiaowei Yuan indicates new theory of MIMO-WPT. IT7S very interesting.

PH: Literally I read everything I could find about wireless power transfer during my PhD study and early careers, now it is impossible to read all so I focus more on new research findings on capacitive power transfer as as well RF energy beaming.

LC: I would like to find the group papers from the groups from Auckland, San Diego State Univ (Chris Mi.), HKU (Ron Hui), Cambridge (Teng Long), etc..

CCB: What are you currently working on that you’d like to tell us about?

AC: I have just started a new project dedicated to the investigation of WPT in the millimeter wave range, for its possible implementation in wearable applications. Both the WPT transmitters and receivers will be designed with real-time beam forming of their radiative parts in order to focus the energy to tiny devices for “on-body” use. The project also aims to provide accurate characterization of the dispersive characteristics of biological tissues in the millimeter-wave in order to include them in the design of the rectenna.

NS: In my laboratory, our works are mainly WPT system, especially WPT via microwave (microwave power transfer ; MPT). For the MPT, we have some interesting works of Rectenna, Beam Forming, and Microwave Tube (Magnetron).

PH: Apart from solving practical engineering problems and finding new solutions, I am trying to understand the power transfer mechanisms of different wireless power transfer systems. For example, how power is actually transferred via magnetic and electric fields, and why it performs so differently at different frequencies.

LC: In fact, my group has focus on one-to-multiple WPT technology for electric vehicle charging, aircraft charging, and home appliance charging, etc..

CCB: In which areas of wireless power transfer research do you expect to see growth in the next ten to twenty years?

AC: In my opinion, one area of significant development will be the automotive and transportation market where both stationary and dynamic wireless charging systems are gaining a lot of attention. New infrastructures for public transportation are foreseen as interesting solutions for “on-the-move” wireless charging. Furthermore the same technology will be probably adopted in large industrial plants for automation purposes with unmanned charts autonomously driven along the plants exchanging energy and information.
Another area were the WPT technologies will be massively exploited is in my opinion the e-health to provide reliable energy to implantable or wearable active devices. This activity has started but it has not reached mature results yet and will be concurrently developed and updated with the implantable devices themselves.

NS: Recently, trend of R&D of the WPT is an inductive WPT and wide-beam MPT like a RF-ID. But recent ten/twenty years, I do believe that narrow-beam MPT will grow based on the wide beam MPT technologies. Expected applications of the narrow-beam MPT are MPT to moving/flying targets and mobiles.
Additionally 30 years later, the microwave power wil lbe transmitted from space to ground. It is my dream, Solar Power Satellite.

PH: Constrained by limited understanding and practical materials we can use, we are facing great hurdles in advancing wireless power transfer technologies now. In next 10-20 years technological improvements in inductive, capacitive, RF and other wireless power solutions will surely to continue, but more importantly I expect there will be some breakthrough in establishing the theoretical framework of wireless power transfer systems which will enable us to achieve real wireless transfer with decent distances and freedom of operation that meets the safety and EMC requirements.

LC: I’d like to see the WPT technology for Trains, Air charging for aircrafts, electric vehicles/bicycles, home appliances, medical devices, etc..

CCB: What drew you to Wireless Power Transfer, or how will your experience and expertise impact the journal?

AC: The Cambridge Wireless Power Transfer journal is a focused editorial platform which collects various researches and applications in this field. Contributors can see the approaches coming from different backgrounds and take advantages of these new perspectives. Indeed I often find in this journal original researches difficult to find elsewhere that give the reader different point of view to be further exploited. This is testified by the large number of citations that can be find in more assessed publications, coming from works published in this young journal. I think that good special issues, focusing even on very niche themes will be useful to broaden the knowledge of this Journal and to encourage researches to submit their novel work in this field.

NS: I have a good connection with not only WPT researchers but also researchers of venture company which promotes WPT/MPT.
Based on my connection, I can gather papers and promote the WPT journal.

PH: Wireless power transfer is my key research area, and I was involved in the initial discussion for launching this journal. I suggested using the term Wireless Power Transfer rather than Wireless Power Transmission that was initially proposed. As far as I know this is still the only dedicated journal in the area, and the journal has gradually drawn good attention to researchers and design engineers. I would continue to do my best to help increase its impact on both the theoretical and practical development of wireless power technologies.

LC: Our journal is the first journal with the name of Wireless Power Transfer. I think we can promote our journal to academic and industrial areas for the corresponding engineers. I will also promote the journal to my colleagues and the experts in this field. Also, some leading ideas and review papers will help to improve our journal impacts, which will be also promoted.