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Metamaterial-enabled wireless and contactless ultrasonic power transfer and data transmission through a metallic wall

Jun Ji, Hyeonu Heo, Jiaxin Zhong, Mourad Oudich, and Yun Jing

Phys. Rev. Applied 21, 014059 – Published 30 January 2024

Abstract

Wireless ultrasonic power transfer and data transmission through a metallic wall requires a direct contact of transducers with the wall owing to the significant impedance mismatch between the surrounding fluid and the wall. Here, a pillar-based acoustic metamaterial is proposed for wireless and contactless ultrasonic power transfer and data transmission through a metallic wall by leveraging the pillar’s vertical elongation mode. Experiments conducted in water demonstrate a 33-fold power transmission enhancement (from 2% to around 66%) at approximately 450 kHz through a 1-mm-thick metallic wall. Furthermore, our experiments show that a commercial light-emitting diode can be illuminated by harvesting the metamaterial-enhanced transmission of ultrasonic energy, which would not have been possible with the metallic wall alone even at an input voltage approximately 5 times greater. In addition, data transmission through the metallic wall is demonstrated by employing amplitude-shift keying modulation to transmit an image, showcasing the remarkable improvement in image quality enabled by the metamaterial. This study paves the way for a future generation of wireless and contactless ultrasonic power transfer and data-transmission applications.

Received 18 July 2023
Accepted 8 January 2024

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.21.014059

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Acoustic modeling Energy harvesting devices Ultrasonics Underwater acoustics Wireless power transfer

Acoustic metamaterials

Additive manufacturing Ultrasound techniques

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsEnergy Science & Technology

Authors & Affiliations

Jun Ji^1,‡, Hyeonu Heo ^1,‡, Jiaxin Zhong ^1,‡, Mourad Oudich ^1,2,*, and Yun Jing ^1,†

¹Graduate Program in Acoustics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA
²Université de Lorraine, CNRS, Institut Jean Lamour, Nancy F-54000, France

^*[email protected]
^†[email protected]
^‡These authors have equally contributed to this work.

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Vol. 21, Iss. 1 — January 2024

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Figure 1
Schematic of the through-metal-wall WCUPT and WCUDT system enabled by the pillar-based acoustic metamaterial. A close-up view of the metamaterial is displayed in the bottom-left corner. The displacement field of the metamaterial at VEM is shown in the top-right corner, which is the mechanism used to enhance the ultrasonic power transmission rate through the metallic wall.
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Figure 2
Design of the pillar-based metamaterial for the through-metal-wall WCUPT and WCUDT. (a) Schematic of a periodically arranged unit cell under an incident plane wave and the first irreducible Brillouin zone. (b) The complex band structure. The real eigenfrequency is plotted on the $y$ axis and the imaginary eigenfrequency is represented by the gray scale. The green ellipse encompasses three propagating modes corresponding to $δ$ , $γ_{1}$ , and $γ_{2}$ . The distribution of the normalized displacement magnitude $| u |$ for these modes is depicted by the color scale. The red dashed line is the sound line. (c) Power transmission rate for different numbers of unit cells under a normally incident plane wave. (d) Power transmission rate as a function of the incident angle of $θ$ when $ϕ = 0$ .
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Figure 3
(a),(b) Schematic and photo of the experimental setup. (c),(d) Fabricated plate with AMMs. (e) The on-axis pressure magnitude distribution has multiple local extremes in the near field of the piston transmitter. (f) Comparison of simulated and measured power transmission rate.
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Figure 4
The transmitted pressure field from numerical simulations (at 460 kHz) and experimental measurements (at 442 kHz) demonstrates the transmission enhancement enabled by the AMM. (a) Simulated and (b) measured pressure field in the $x$ - $y$ plane at $z = 45 mm$ . (c) Simulated and (d) measured pressure field in the $x$ - $z$ plane at $y = 0 mm$ . The center of the transmitter surface is set as the origin of the coordinate. For each subfigure, the pressure magnitude is normalized by the maximum value in the case of “no plate.”
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Figure 5
Experimental results of wireless and contactless ultrasonic power transfer through a metallic wall using the pillar-based metamaterial. (a) Schematic and photo of experimental setups. The enhanced ultrasonic transmission is collected by a receiver to charge capacitors. (b) The measured output signals of the receiver under an excitation of 445-kHz continuous-mode ultrasound for four different configurations: an input voltage of 4.4 Vpp on the transmitter for (i) “no plate,” (ii) “plate w/ AMM,” and (iii) “plate w/o AMM,” as well as (iv) an input voltage of 20 Vpp on the transmitter for “plate w/o AMM.” (c) The charging time dependence of voltage on a $220 μ F$ capacitor for the four configurations. (d) Comparison of the charged voltage and average charging power. (e) Photo showing that a commercial LED lit up in the configuration (ii).
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Figure 6
Experimental results of wireless and contactless ultrasonic data transmission of a binary image of “PSU.” (a) The transmission of binary data using ASK modulation: (i) a 15-bit binary signal embedded within the start bits (100) and the stop bits (001), (ii) the binary signal is transformed into digital signal before being transmitted through a PZT transducer, in which each bit is represented by five cycles of sine waves at 445 kHz, (iii) the received time-domain digital signal for “plate w/ AMM”, and (iv) the received time-domain digital signal for “plate w/o AMM.” For (ii)–(iv), the left axis is the digital voltage and the right axis is the digital power. (b) The original image composed of $15 \times 36$ pixels is encoded into binary signals of “0” and “1.” (c) The transmitted digital image. (d) The received digital image for “plate w/ AMM.” (e) The received digital image for “plate w/o AMM.” The digital power in (c)–(e) is normalized by their respective maximum digital power. The signals in the 15th column (highlighted by blue blocks) of images in (b)–(e) are shown in (a).
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Physical Review Applied

Metamaterial-enabled wireless and contactless ultrasonic power transfer and data transmission through a metallic wall

Jun Ji, Hyeonu Heo, Jiaxin Zhong, Mourad Oudich, and Yun Jing

Phys. Rev. Applied 21, 014059 – Published 30 January 2024

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