Single-coil wireless power transfer has an alignment problem: move the receiver and efficiency collapses. US11404910B2, granted to Raytheon Company on August 2, 2022, claims a way around it — a multi-cell array of transmitter coils. Claim 1's novelty is the array, not the physics of any one link.
The CPC tags span power transfer and vehicle charging: H02J 50/12 (inductive transfer), H01F 38/14 (transformer-type coil coupling), B60L 53/12 and 53/36 (contactless vehicle charging), plus H02M 7/5387 for the inverter driving the coils. The combination describes a system where multiple cells can be energized selectively depending on where the receiver sits.
That selectivity is the point. With an array, the system activates whichever cells best couple to the receiver's current position, tolerating the misalignment that kills single-coil efficiency. Claim 1 fences off this coordinated multi-cell delivery — the routing of power across an array to track a receiver.
Reading scope strictly, the limitation is the multi-cell coordination, which is narrower than "wireless power transfer" and broader than any specific cell design. It is a defensible middle: novel enough to clear prior single-coil art, general enough to cover various array implementations.
The caution: a multi-cell coordination claim does not own array-based wireless power — competitors with different activation logic or cell geometry can route around it. And given the assignee, this reads as much like a defense/mobility IP play as a grid one. For our beat, it is a data point on how the wireless-power field moved from single links to coordinated arrays in the early 2020s.