High Frequency Inductive Power Transfer Through Soil for Agricultural Applications

This paper presents 13.56 MHz inductive power transfer (IPT) through soil for sensors in agricultural applications. Two IPT system designs and their prototypes are presented. The first was designed gathering data observing the relationship between performance of coil driving circuits response to water content, salinity, organic matter compaction soil. second prototype as an application demonstrator, featuring in-house sensor node enclosure buried 200 mm under surface field. results highlight that from parameters studied, combination high salinity content significantly increases losses system. experiments demonstrate over 40% rise dc source load after a 16% increase salinity. In technology demonstrator we mounted transmitter on drone wirelessly bank supercapacitors sensor-node enclosure. A peak 30 W received at efficiency achieved 22 V supply energy storage ground. separation these 250 which correspond layer coupling factor all lower than 5%. trialled field forty days wireless performed five times throughout.