Alumni Webinar Series – Wireless Power: Current Status and Future Trend
Wireless power was pioneered by Tesla a century ago, but it found no commercial applications in the early half of last century. However, it was revived in recent years and its market size is expected to increase from US$ 6.5 Billion in 2018 to over US$ 40 Billion by 2027. This talk will start with a brief historical review of “near-field” magnetic wireless power transfer (WPT) dating back from Nicolas Tesla’s work a century ago. It will clarify that magnetic resonance was pioneered by Tesla in his early work and is not a recent invention. It will also explain why WPT became feasible again since 1980s with some highlights of landmark examples.
The second part of the talk will focus on the latest research and developments of WPT from one-directional to omni-directional applications, with emphases on portable electronics applications. The speaker will address some emerging WPT technologies and applications arising from the merge of the power system infrastructure and information infrastructure.
The speaker will end his talk by addressing the emerging and future trends of WPT technologies and international WPT standards. He will also share his views on the factors that will limit WPT applications.
Register here.
About the Speaker
MediaTek Endowed Professor, School of EEE
Prof. Ron Hui received the PhD degree from the Imperial College London in 1986. He has held academic positions at Nottingham University (1986-1989), UTS (1980-1990), Sydney University (1991-1996) and CityU of Hong Kong (1996-2010). In 2011-2021, he was a Chair Professor of Power Electronics at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and Imperial College London. At HKU, he held the Philip Wong Wilson Wong Professorship of Electrical Engineering. From March 2021, he holds the MediaTek Endowed Professorship at Nanyang Technological University and Chair Professorship at Imperial College London.
He has published over 320 refereed journal papers and has over 120 patents adopted by industry worldwide. His inventions have underpinned key dimensions of the world’s first wireless power standard Qi, launched in 2010 by the Wireless Power Consortium with over 430 company members including Apple, Samsung etc. He is the recipient of the 2015 IEEE William Newell Power Electronics Award, 2010 IEEE Rudolf Chope R&D Award and 2010 IET Crompton Medal. He is a Fellow of the IEEE (2003), Australian Academy of Technology & Engineering (2010), the US National Academy of Inventors (2018) and the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK (2016).
About the Moderator
Prof Er Meng Hwa
Chairman, EEE Alumni Engagement Committee