A Novel Active Rectifier With Embedded Current Monitoring Capabilities for Wireless Power Transfer Systems

This paper proposes a novel active rectifier architecture for wireless power transfer (WPT) systems. In addition to performing rectification, the proposed structure features embedded current monitoring capabilities, which can be exploited for implementing overcurrent protection and/or regulation. The proposed active rectifier, designed in a 90-nm BCD process, was extensively simulated in Cadence Virtuoso, considering also the effect of process and mismatch variations, thus verifying its performance: Indeed, the proposed active rectifier achieves efficiency values exceeding 97% for a wide range of output power values and operating frequencies. The proposed architecture was also compared with a standard active rectifier circuit solution, designed in the same technology, demonstrating its advantages as it features additional current monitoring capabilities without a significant efficiency penalty.