Meter-Range Wireless Motor Drive for Pipeline Transportation

This paper proposes and implements a meter-range wireless motor drive (WMD) system for promising applications of underground pipeline transportations or in-pipe robots. To power a pipeline network beneath the earth, both the power grid and the control system are usually required to be deployed deep underground, thus increasing the construction cost, maintenance difficulty and system complexity. The proposed system newly develops a hybrid repeater to enable the desired meter-range wireless power and drive transfer, which can offer a fault-tolerant network with a robust structure for the underground sensor-free WMD while maintaining a high transmission efficiency. Hence, this wireless pipeline network can reduce the maintenance requirement and regulate the flow rate effectively. A full-scale prototype has been built for practical verification, and the system efficiency can reach 88.8% at a long transfer distance of 150 cm. Theoretical analysis, software simulation and hardware experimentation are given to verify the feasibility of proposed meter-range WMD for underground pipeline transportations.