A Switched Planar Multi-Coil Transmitter Antenna Designed with Non-uniform H-field Forming for Small Device Localization

Abstract

To monitor 3-D position and orientation of a small device having planar receiver coil, a switched multi-coil transmitter antenna is proposed by adopting time-divisional approach. The existing multi-frequency methods require eight or more input ports to feed the coils with multi-frequency signals for localization. In contrast, the proposed transmitter antenna is driven by a single frequency source and uses only three input ports for reduced complexity. Moreover, the multiple coils of the proposed antenna are optimally grouped to form non-uniform magnetic-field distribution using three switches in such a manner that better localization accuracy is achieved as compared to the multi-frequency design. Rigorous analysis and simulations are performed to investigate the performance of the proposed design and localization approach. To validate the claim, experimental study results proved the potential of the proposed antenna employed for tracking a planar receiver in applications like medical robots, navigation of blind people, virtual reality, etc