Wireless Power Transmission: R&D Activities Within Europe

Wireless power transmission (WPT) is an emerging technology that is gaining increased visibility in recent years. Efficient WPT circuits, systems and strategies can address a large group of applications spanning from batteryless systems, batteryfree sensors, passive RF identification, near-field communications, and many others. WPT is a fundamental enabling technology of the Internet of Things concept, as well asmachine-to-machine comManuscript received October 01, 2013; revised December 18, 2013; accepted December 20, 2013. Date of publication February 07, 2014; date of current version April 02, 2014. The work of N. Borges Carvalho and A. J. S. Soares Boaventura was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under Project CREATION EXCL/EEI-TEL/0067/2012 and Doctoral Scholarship SFRH/BD/80615/2011. The work of H. Rogier was supported by BELSPO through the IAP Phase VII BESTCOM project and the Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders (FWO-V). The work of A. Georgiadis and A. Collado was supported by the European Union (EU) under Marie Curie FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IAPP 251557 and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness Project TEC 2012-39143. The work of J. A. García and M. N. Ruíz was supported by the Spanish Ministries MICINN and MINECO under FEDER co-funded Project TEC2011-29126-C03-01 and Project CSD2008-00068. The work of J. Kracek and M. Mazanek was supported in part by the Czech Ministry of Education Youth and Sports under Project OC09075–Novel Emerging Wireless Systems. N. Borges Carvalho andA. J. Soares Boaventura arewith the Instituto de Telecomunicações, Departamento de Electrónica, Telecomunicações e Informática, Universidade de Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal (e-mail: nbcarvalho@ua. pt). A. Georgiadis and A. Collado are with the Centre Tecnologic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC), Castelldefels 08860, Spain (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]). A. Costanzo and D. Masotti are with DEI “Gugliemo Marconi,” University of Bologna, 40136 Bologna, Italy (e-mail: [email protected]; diego. [email protected]). H. Rogier is with the Department of Information Technology (INTEC), IMEC/Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium (e-mail: [email protected]). J. A. García and M. de las Nieves Ruíz Lavín are with the Department of Communications Engineering, University of Cantabria, 39005 Santander, Spain (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]). S. Lucyszyn, M. Piñuela, D. C. Yates, and P. D. Mitcheson are with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, U.K. (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];). P. Mezzanotte is with the Department of Electronic and Information Engineering, University of Perugia, Perugia 06125, Italy (e-mail: [email protected]). J. Kracek, M. Mazanek, and V. Pankrac are with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Department of Electromagnetic Field, Czech Technical University, 16627 Prague, Czech Republic (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]). Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMTT.2014.2303420 munications, since it minimizes the use of batteries and eliminates wired power connections.WPT technology brings together RF and dc circuit and system designers with different backgrounds on circuit design, novel materials and applications, and regulatory issues, forming a cross disciplinary team in order to achieve an efficient transmission of power over the air interface. This paper aims to present WPT technology in an integrated way, addressing state-of-the-art and challenges, and to discuss future R&D perspectives summarizing recent activities in Europe.