Location Estimation Based on Fingerprinting Technique for Two-Dimensional Multihop Wireless Power Transfer System

The two-dimensional multihop wireless power transfer (2DM-WPT) system can supply electrical power to a wide range of devices. In this system, location information is needed for high power transfer efficiency. We propose a location estimation method based on a fingerprinting technique for the 2DM-WPT system. The proposed method utilizes the reflection coefficient as a location fingerprint. We conduct an electromagnetic simulation to validate the proposed method. When the same receiver is used in both the learning phase and the estimation phase, the correct estimation rate is 96.05%. When two receivers with different shapes and sizes are used in the learning phase and the estimation phase, the correct estimation rate is 59.78%. However, the location is estimated correctly over the couplers where power can be transferred with high efficiency. These results show the effectiveness of the proposed method when the receiver shapes and sizes are the same in the learning phase and the estimation phase. In contrast, when the receiver shapes and sizes are different in each phase, some locations are estimated incorrectly.