Press Releases | January 13, 2021

For drones that can be stationed underwater for the adoption of ICT in mariculture

Associate professor Masaya Tamura, Kousuke Murai (who has completed the first term of his master's program), and their research team from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Information Engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology have successfully transferred power and data wirelessly through seawater by using a power transmitter/receiver with four layers of ultra-thin, flat electrodes. In the field of wireless power transfers, seawater behaves as a dielectric with extremely high loss, and achievement through capacitive coupling is difficult. Up until now, it had been thought that wireless power transfers could only be achieved through magnetic coupling. This time, with a focus on the high-frequency properties of seawater, a third method for conductive coupling was devised, and a power transmitter/receiver was developed to achieve highly-efficient power transfers.

Full text: Seawater as an electrical cable !? Wireless power transfers in the ocean
TUT website: Press release