A 3D Resonant Wireless Charger for a Wearable Device and a Mobile
Phone
Ron-Chi Kuo1,2, Patrick Riehl1, Anand Satyamoorthy1, William Plumb1, Philip Tustin1, and Jenshan Lin2
1
MediaTek, Woburn, MA, USA; 2University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
Patrick.Riehl@mediatek.com
Abstract — A resonant wireless power transfer (WPT)
system that allows for free positioning of a wearable device about
a 360o axis of rotation and simultaneous charging of a mobile
phone is proposed. A 3D transmitter coil structure is introduced
to provide a cylindrical charging surface with a uniform
magnetic field. A prototype charging system including an
amplifier and a rectifier operating at 6.78 MHz is demonstrated.
The prototype delivers 1 W to a wearable device and 5 W to a
mobile phone simultaneously with a power transfer efficiency of
48%.
Index Terms —Wireless charging, wireless power, wearable
I. INTRODUCTION
Small, battery-powered electronic devices that require less
than 1 W to operate have proliferated in recent years.
Wearable devices, the “Internet of Things”, and implantable
medical devices all belong to this category. A common feature
of these devices is that it can be impractical or impossible to
connect a dc voltage supply to recharge the battery. Therefore,
there is significant interest in non-contact charging methods
such as resonant wireless power transfer (WPT). WPT has
been demonstrated for implantable devices, remote sensors,
and wearable devices [1]-[3]. The ideal WPT system would
provide a charging rate similar to that which can be obtained
using a conventional dc supply, with high power transfer
efficiency. In addition, it would provide a high degree of
spatial freedom, so as to provide the user with an effortless
charging experience. In practice, it is difficult to achieve both
objectives. Systems that provide high efficiency typically
require precise alignment of charger and device, while
systems that offer free positioning tend to suffer from low
charging rate and/or low efficiency. Furthermore, much of the
research in the mobile electronics space has focused on planar
devices such as mobile phones and tablets [4], whereas
wearable devices often have unusual shapes that may be
awkward for the user to place on a planar charging pad. In this
work, we demonstrate a WPT system for a “smart watch”
wearable device that features free positioning around a
cylindrical charging surface, which provides an intuitive guide
for device placement. The charger also provides for
simultaneous charging of a mobile phone. Both devices can be
charged at the equivalent rate to wired charging with a
combined power transfer efficiency (PTE) of 48%.
978-1-4673-7447-7/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE
The charging system is consistent with the operational
principles of the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP)
Rezence specification, including the operating frequency of
6.78 MHz [5].
II. COIL DESIGN
A. Transmitting Coil
In order to support simultaneous charging of a mobile
phone and a smart watch, a three-dimensional (3D) coil
structure is proposed in this paper, as shown in Fig. 1(a). The
area between the upper turns and base turns along the sidewall
of the cylinder is designed for wearable device charging, while
the top spiral coil is designed for mobile phone charging. The
magnetic flux distribution generated by the coil was simulated
using ANSYS HFSS and plotted in Fig. 1(b).
According to Ampere’s “right-hand rule”, two parallel wires
carrying currents in opposite directions generate a magnetic
field in the same direction. In the proposed design, the current
in the base turns flows opposite to the current in the upper
turns. This enhances the magnetic field in the sidewall area
where the wearable device rests. The vertical wire connecting
the upper turns to the base turns generates a magnetic field
that can cause an asymmetry in the field normal to the
charging surface. To minimize the impact of this vertical wire
on the charging field, it was placed inwards, towards the
central axis of the coil. This makes the asymmetry effect
negligible, as shown in Fig. 1 (b).
Fig. 1 (c) shows an EM simulation result for the top spiral
coil. In order to allow simultaneous charging of the wearable
device and the phone, the top spiral coil was designed to
produce the same magnetic flux density as the sidewall area
for the same coil current. The magnetic field is highly uniform
across the top charging surface, mimicking the characteristics
of an ideal solenoid. The coil current for both simulations was
1 A. In normal operation, coil current is adjustable in a range
close to this value.
The transmitter coil was fabricated by winding 16-gauge
wire around a 3D-printed plastic coil form. The measured
inductance and quality factor of the transmitter coil were 1.30
H and 250, respectively. A ferrite sheet was placed
underneath the coil to shield the electronics in the base of the
charger.
Fig. 1 (a) Structure of 3D transmitting coil. (b) Magnetic field strength in wearable device charging area, in A/m. (c) Magnetic
field strength in mobile phone charging area, in A/m.

B. Receiving Coil for a Wearable Device

The design constraints for the receiving coil were more
restrictive, as space was limited within the smart watch
construction. A planar coil structure with a size of 29x31 mm 2
was used, as shown in Fig. 2. The receiver coil was optimized
to provide a large enough mutual inductance to keep the
transmitter coil current reasonable, while maintaining a high
quality factor to minimize receiver-coil losses. A 2-oz copper
PCB spiral coil with 9 turns was fabricated using 300 µm
traces, spaced 275 µm apart. The coil achieved a quality
factor of 76 with an inductance of 3.55 H.
Fig. 2. Layout of the wearable device receiving coil.
C. Coupling Coefficient
The coupling coefficient of the coil pair was extracted from
two-port S-parameter measurements on a vector network
analyzer. Fig. 3 shows the scan pattern for our coupling
measurements in addition to the measured data. The measured
coupling coefficient is between 7% and 9% throughout the
charging area. For comparison, we also scanned the wearable
receiving coil (RX) in a serpentine pattern across a planar
spiral transmitting coil. The resulting scan of coupling
coefficients, also shown in Fig. 3, illustrates the advantageous
coupling uniformity of the 3D transmitter coil.

III. SYSTEM DESIGN

A Power Transmitting Unit (PTU) and Power Receiving
Units (PRU) were designed to demonstrate the operation of
the coil pair. The PTU used a full-bridge Class-E amplifier
operating in a zero-voltage-switching mode followed by an
LCL- network, as shown in Fig. 4. The LCL-  matching
network serves to hold the transmitter coil current roughly
constant with respect to PRU placement and load conditions
[6]. The PRUs used the multi-mode wireless power IC Fig. 3. Coupling coefficient measured as the wearable
described in previous work [7]. receiving coil (RX) was scanned across the proposed 3D
In the case of the wearable device PRU, this IC was paired transmitter coil and a planar transmitter coil for 36 different
with the wearable device coil and operated in the 6.78 MHz positions.
Fig. 4. Schematic of Class-E amplifier
and an LCL-
matching network, drawn as single-ended.

Fig. 5. Demonstration of the proposed WPT system charging

mode. The smart phone PRU used the
multi-mode coil
described in previous work [7]. Both PRUs communicate to
the PTU using load modulation. As in a Rezence system, the
PTU monitors status messages from the PRUs and adjusts coil
current to optimize power transfer for both devices.
(a) a smart watch and (b) a smart watch and a mobile phone.
A comparison of the performance of this system with
previously published work in terms of PTE, power delivered
to loads (PDL) and spatial freedom is given in Table I.

IV. IMPLEMENTATION Typically, efficiency is quoted as “DC-to-DC”, with input

A photograph of the WPT system with a smart watch and a
mobile phone is shown in Fig. 5. The power transfer
efficiency of the system including amplifier, rectifiers,
regulators and coil losses is 48% for the combination of the
mobile phone and smart watch charging at a rate of 5 W and
1.15 W, respectively. When charging the watch alone, the
power efficiency is relatively low because of fixed losses in
the transmitter amplifier, which is designed to support up to
10 W power delivery to load devices. Coil-to-coil efficiency
for charging the smart watch is estimated to be 79.5%.
power measured at the PTU amplifier input and output power
measured at the PRU rectifier output. In this work, output
power was measured at the regulated 5V output.
V. CONCLUSION
A resonant WPT system that supports simultaneous
charging of a smart watch and a mobile phone is
demonstrated. A unique 3D structure provides a uniform 360o
charging surface, enabling free positioning of the smart watch.
The power transfer efficiency when simultaneously charging a
smart watch and a mobile phone is 48%.

TABLE I
COMPARISON OF WPT SYSTEMS WITH PDL < 10 W AND INCREASED SPATIAL FREEDOM
[1] [2] [3] [4] [This work]
Implantable Test structures, Smart watch +
Device type Hearing aid Mobile phone
sensor open air Mobile phone
Max PDL 2.4 mW 28 mW 275 mW 3W 1W + 5W
Max PTE 24% 28% 37% 60% 48%
PTE terminals DC-to-DC DC-to-DC coil-to-coil DC-to-DC DC-to-reg. 5V
20 cm distance, 360 deg, inside Axially aligned, 1.1 Planar charging 360 deg cyllindrical
Spatial Freedom
30 deg tilt bowl coil diameter spacing surface, 32x22 cm2 charging surface

[4] J.Choi et al, "Design of high efficiency wireless charging pad

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