Listen to this articleNuVolta Technologies provide next generation high frequency wireless power ICs and system solutions. Its technology and product enable spatial freedom charging and miniature receiving coils. Its simple and cost effective turn-key solutions are well suited for tomorrow’s mobile devices. Below is our interview with Michael Wang from NuVolta Technologies:
Q: What’s Nuvolta’s story? How did NuVolta Technologies start and why wireless power?
A: We are group of industry veterans with on average more than 15 years’ experience and complimentary domain expertise. We picked the wireless power as our focus for technology and product development for two reasons. First, we believe that wireless power has tremendous market opportunities ranging from powering sub one-watt IoT devices to charging EVs at multi-kilowatts. The most imminent and explosive market will be wireless charging for mobile devices. Mobile phone users want to get rid of all tangled wires and have access to power everywhere they go without the need to plug in. By year 2020, there will be one billion wireless power receivers installed, mostly in mobile consumer devices. The second reason is that wireless power is technically challenging. There are no solutions to truly satisfy the customers’ need for spatial freedom and high efficiency power transfer at acceptable cost. The technology is still at its infancy, and with our collective knowledge and experience, we created unique solutions to address these critical requirements to drive technology forward and enable its proliferation.
Q: What’s wireless power landscape in terms of standard and technologies?
A: There are multiple standards for wireless power. The oldest and most prevalent standard today is WPC’s Qi standard. This standard is based on low frequency technology in the range of 100KHz to 200KHz. It is power efficient and cost effective. However, the limitation of the low frequency wireless power is that it lacks the flexibility of spatial freedom, and receiver coil tends to be too thick and large to be placed inside a mobile device. In addition, the low frequency magnetic field used for power transfer can’t penetrate metal and prevent the technology to be used for charging smartphones with metal bodies. The next generation of wireless power uses high frequency magnetic resonance technology, and its associated standard is called AirFuel. It provides the vision of spatial freedom charging, miniature receiver coil and through-metal power transfer. So far, there are very limited commercial product based on the technology. We believe there are two reasons hindering the productization. First is that the power transfer efficiency is too low which limits the amount of power delivery from the chargers to mobile devices. Today, consumers are expecting fast charging their smartphones which requires even higher power transfer. The second factor is cost. The benefit of wireless charging has to overweight the added cost in order for mobile OEMs to willingly adopt and integrate the function. It is not the case today. Most of high frequency wireless power designs, on both transmitter and receiver sides, are made of discreet component and circuit. There are needs to have higher level of integration to drive cost down.
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Q: Can you give us more insights into your technology?
A: We approach the challenges of high frequency wireless power from power system design point of view where its academic and product development histories have always been driven by improving power transfer efficiency. We looked at existing high frequency wireless power architecture, and saw abundant opportunities for simplification and optimization. Our proprietary system has reduced the power conversation stages from seven to four which by itself has significantly raised overall power conversion efficiency. In addition, we have adopted soft-switching technology for the power amplifier in the transmitter which is the bottleneck of the efficient power transfer. The soft-switching technology makes sure that the class D amplifier is always switching at zero voltage condition to minimize the switching losses, the dominating power losses at high frequency. With the system, we are able to increase the overall power efficiency from less than 50% to more than 70%. This makes it feasible to integrate wireless power function into most of mobile devices without the burden of thermal management and risks of unacceptable user experience due to the heating. The other major benefit of this simplified and improved architecture is that we are able to reduce the total solution cost due to those eliminated power conversion circuit and its associated component.
Q: What is the status of product development and commercialization?
A: One of the unique capability of NuVolta is that not only we have the power system expertise to create our own system architecture and system design, we also have an outstanding engineering capability to develop integrated circuit. This combination is very rare in the industry. The outcome is turn-key wireless power solutions with optimized performance, cost and density. We are currently sampling high frequency wireless power transmitter and receiver system solutions using NU1000 and NU2500, integrated circuit developed by NuVolta for transmitter and receiver . We have several reference designs targeting different power ratings and applications ranging from 2.5W system for wearable and smart watches to 20W system for smartphone and tablets. These designs take full advantage of unique offerings of high frequency technology and provide ultra-thin receiver coil design, spatial freedom charging and through metal fast charging. Thanks to our proprietary system architecture and highly integrated solution, these designs have shown 60% reduction of power losses and 60% reduction of solution cost.
We are engaging with broad range of customers and applications who are all seeing the benefits of wireless power and convinced by the high frequency as promising next generation technology.
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Q: What are your plans for the next year?
A: We are working diligently with our customers and plan for product launch in next 12 months. To integrating wireless power into complex systems such as smartphones and smartwatches, not only the efficient and reliable power transfer have to be guaranteed, but also the coexistence of existing system has to be supported and verified. We are making great progress there. Building upon our core competence of power system and integrated circuit design, we are quickly expanding our engineering capability into areas such as firmware development and compliance testing. Our goal is to be able to provide turn-key solution to our customers to expedite their product development and reduce time to market.
In addition to smartphones and smartwatches, we have seen tremendous opportunities for wireless power adoption in powering smart home, mobile accessories, drones and EV. Next year, we will start to explore these areas and try to find the right fit for our technology and product solutions. We want to enable wireless power for as much market as possible, but are also mindful of critical force to make meaningful impact.
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Q: More generally, how do you see the wireless power landscape developing, and where do you place yourself in the industry?
A: Wireless power is growing at rapid pace in the last few years, driven by increasing adoption in smartphones and smart watches. This trend will not stop, but accelerate. As there are many wireless communication standards tailoring for their own unique application space, we can foresee several wireless power standards and technologies coexisting to offer end equipment and their users choices of mobility, power rating, and cost. There will not be one-size-fits-all. There are tremendous opportunities for system solution providers, module suppliers, IC companies and component suppliers.
NuVolta is in a leading position for its expertise on high frequency wireless power, its optimized solution platform, and its ability to create cost effective turn-key solutions. We want to collaborate with our suppliers, customers and partners to accelerate the adoption of wireless power and make it an even easier process. We are motivated by our vision to make wireless power as proliferated as wireless communications.
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