This paper proposes a new Variable Compensation Rectifier (VCR) for mitigating coupling variations in wireless power transfer (WPT) systems. The proposed VCR allows a WPT system to achieve continuous compensation and a constant output power over wide range of misalignments and air-gap variations without having to change the system’s operating frequency. The VCR is shown to achieve a substantially higher compensation range than that of the recently proposed Active Variable Reactance (AVR) rectifier while having an inherently simpler control methodology. The paper also outlines a systematic methodology to design a VCR-based capacitive WPT system. Furthermore, an example design is presented where the VCR is shown to enable nearly three times higher reactive compensation compared to the AVR rectifier.
