Primary side control of load voltage for transcutaneous energy transmission

Transcutaneous energy transmission (TET) is considered as a good way to wirelessly power the implanted devices in human bodies. The load voltage provided from the TET to the implanted device should be kept stable to ensure the device working well, which however, is easily affected by the required power variation for different body movements and coil-couple malposition accompanying skin peristalsis. Commonly, the load voltage applied onto the device should be measured and feedback for power is regulated by implanting sensing and communication units into the body, which causes additional energy cost, increased size and weight of the implanted device. This paper takes the TET for artificial heart as an example to propose a novel primary side control method of the load voltage for TET, which does not require any additional implanted components. In the method, sensing coils are used to measure the malposition between the transmitter coil (TC) and receiver coil, and the magnitude of the TC current outside the human body. The measurement results are used to estimate the load voltage inside the body through calculation, whose value provide a base to develop a PI control system to regulate the input power of TET for the load voltage stability. The proposed method is experimentally validated on an actual TET for artificial heart by varying its load in a wide range under serious coil-couple malposition. With applying the primary side control, the variation of the load voltage is reduced to only 25 % of that without the control.