Apple Inc.

Weiyun Chen

Stephen Christopher Terry

Yongxuan Hu

Di Zhao

Bin Gu

Chi Kin Ho

Ruchi Jagdish Parikh

Norah E Nakibuuka

Michael D Black

A battery powered electronic device can include a wireless power system configured to receive power from a wireless power transmitter, a converter coupled to the wireless power system that converts a voltage from the wireless power system to a battery charging voltage, a battery comprising at least two cells, a power management unit that delivers power from one or more of the at least two cells to one or more subsystems of the electronic device, and a plurality of switching devices connecting the at least two cells, the converter, and the power management unit. The plurality of switching devices can be arranged so that a first switching configuration connects the cells in series for charging from the converter and a second switching configuration connects the cells in parallel for delivering power to the power management unit.

Power system configurations for wireless charging

An electronic device may receive or provide power using bidirectional wired and wireless power converters. A bypass path may be included to bypass the battery charger and to allow direct power transfers from a connector of the electronic device to the wireless power converter or from the wireless power converter to the connector of the electronic device. Current limiting and regulation circuitry may also be included.

Multimode battery charging

A wireless power system has a wireless power transmitting device and a wireless power receiving device. The wireless power transmitting device and wireless power receiving device may include control circuitry that measures operating parameters. During wireless power transmission operations, the wireless power receiving device may periodically send feedback to the wireless power transmitting device such as in-band wireless power adjustment commands requesting that the wireless power transmitting device adjust the amount of power being transmitted from the wireless power transmitting device to the wireless power receiving device. Faster estimates of desired adjustments to the amount of transmitted power can be made by the wireless power transmitting device using real-time measurements of wireless power transmitting device coil current and wireless power transmitting device coil voltage.

Wireless power system with power control

A wireless power receiving device has a coil that receives wireless power signals from a wireless power transmitting device and has a rectifier that produces direct-current power across rectifier output terminals using the received wireless power signals. A load in the wireless power receiving device receives a direct-current output voltage from the rectifier output terminals. In-band communications are supported in which an amplitude-shift keying communications scheme or other communications scheme is used by a data transmitter in the wireless power receiving device to transmit in-band data through the coil. In-band data is transmitted by modulating one or more transistors that are coupled to the coil and other wireless power receiving circuitry in series with one or more capacitors and is transmitted by modulating current flow through a ballast transistor or other adjustable load that is coupled across the rectifier output terminals.

Wireless power system with in-band communications

This disclosure describes a system and a method to limit (i.e., regulate) the input power of a power converter as a function of the voltage and/or loading condition of a power-limited source such as a battery. In some embodiments, the power converter may comprise a transconductance amplifier that may produce a sink current to a current mirror, which in turn that may provide an adjusted current limit threshold to the power converter. The power converter may utilize the current limit threshold to perform cycle-by-cycle current limiting, thus regulating the input power drawn from the battery.

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Los Gatos, CA, United States of America

Weiyun Chen