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In this paper, a new modular and active snubber cell, easily applicable, and attractive for converters, especially have many switches proposed. This snubber cell is implemented on the single phase of a grid-connected three-phase T-type three-level inverter (T-3LI). In this new converter, the main switches turn-on under zero-voltage transition and turn-off under zero-voltage switching (ZVS). Also, auxiliary switches turn-on under zero-current switching and turn-off under ZVS. All snubber diodes operate under soft switching (SS). There are no additional current and voltage stresses on the main switches. During an SS operation, the switching energies are transferred to a dc voltage source. Then, these energies are processed to input with an independent dc–dc converter. Thus, all switching energies are recycled. In this paper, the principle operation and steady-state analysis of the modular and active snubber cell for a single-phase T-3LI are presented and experimental results, rated 1 kW and 100 kHz, are provided to verify theoretical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a family of soft-switching bidirectional converters. In many applications, the bidirectional converters operate over a wide range of duty cycle and load variations. In the proposed converters, in order to extend the zero-voltage switching operation range, two supplemental voltage sources utilizing passive components are implemented in the auxiliary circuit. By using this method, the soft-switching features are ensured for an extensive range of the converter duty cycles. This is achieved independent of the output power value or the converter operation mode, and so, soft switching is ensured within the entire converter operating region. In these converters, all semiconductors components are soft switched, and the auxiliary circuit does not contribute to the complexity of the control circuit. Also, no extra voltage stress exists on the main switches and the voltage stress on the auxiliary switches is lower than the main switches voltage stress. In this paper, the proposed bidirectional buck/boost converter is analyzed and to confirm the feasibility of the proposed method, experimental results of a 150-W prototype converter are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The interleaved bidirectional buck–boost converter dual active half-bridge (IBBC-DAHB) dc–dc converter consists of two converters IBBC and DAHB and a coupled inductor. The IBBC-DAHB converter has significant features such as low ripple current at the low-voltage side, low current stress on the input inductors, voltage stress across the switches less than the high-voltage side, high voltage gain, and zero-voltage soft switching. The converter offers high efficiency using phase-shift modulation when it operates at a nominal design operating point. However, the efficiency decreases due to high circulating current, high current stress, and limited soft-switching range when the source and load voltages deviate from their nominal values. This paper employs both duty cycle and phase-shift modulation methods to improve the above mentioned shortcomings using voltage matching for the DAHB converter. The proposed converter is analyzed and a 500-W experimental prototype with 40–60 V input voltage and 400 V output voltage under 100 kHz switching frequency is implemented to verify the theoretical results. The maximum efficiency of 97.15% is achieved at 60 V and 400 W. A flat efficiency characteristic for the converter is derived by the proposed control method, where the efficiency at 20% of nominal load is 91% and much higher than the phase-shift control, which is 70.8%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A nonisolated bidirectional dc–dc converter with high voltage gain, low voltage stress, low component count, and soft-switching features is presented in this paper. In this topology, coupled inductors and voltage multiplier cells are merged to achieve high step-up/down voltage gain. Also, due to using active clamp circuits, the voltage stress of power switches is relatively low. Thus, the low voltage switches with low on-resistance can be employed to reduce the conduction losses. Furthermore, zero-voltage switching is accomplished in both high step-up and high step-down modes for all power switches, and due to zero-current switching operation of all antiparallel diodes, the reverse recovery losses are reduced. In order to verify the theoretical analysis and the converter performance, a 200 W prototype circuit of the proposed converter is implemented in the laboratory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 1-MHz-modified single-ended primary-inductor converter (SEPIC) circuit is presented in this paper as an LED driver for automotive headlights. On the basis of traditional SEPIC, only a diode and two capacitors are added; therefore, the circuit structure is relatively simple and the volume is relatively small. High step-up capability is obtained with moderate duty cycle. Compared with traditional step-up circuit such as boost, low-voltage stress is gained which is beneficial to device selection. Zero-voltage switching is achieved at the same time to reduce switching loss. Planar inductors are used with the advantages of low profile and good thermal characteristic. Operational principle and parameters design process are introduced in detail. A 36-W prototype has been designed to demonstrate theoretical analysis. Obtained efficiency was up to 90.91% at full load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soft-switching inverters can achieve high efficiencies and low switchdv/dtanddi/dt, but often impose additional stress on the switches due to their resonant behavior. Multicell converters, on the other hand, can process high voltages by arranging the switches to share the stress. This paper proposes a buck–boost multicell soft-switching inverter with inherent cell voltage balancing. Both the current and voltage stresses are shared by the cells. Soft-switching conditions are achieved for all switching transitions without any need for auxiliary circuitry or clamps. A multiple-winding transformer transfers energy between the terminals and provides galvanic isolation. An analytical study and experimental results on a 1200-W prototype verify the operation of the inverter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a family of automatic interleaved Dickson switched-capacitor converters (AIDSCC) and its zero-voltage switching (ZVS) resonant configuration are proposed. Different from the traditional Dickson switched-capacitor converter, the AIDSCC has symmetrical configuration with the features of automatic interleaved input current, small output voltage ripple, and lower peak capacitor voltage stress. To improve the line regulation capability, one small resonant inductor is inserted and two bulky capacitor banks are replaced by two much smaller resonant capacitors, forming the resonant AIDSCC. The transistors are ZVS turned on and diodes are zero-current switching turned off by operating above the resonance. With frequency modulation within a reasonable range, the voltage-gain range of the resonant AIDSCC is expanded significantly, while sacrificing the maximum efficiency due to the higher conduction loss. A 3X AIDSCC and a 3X resonant AIDSCC below 140 W were built to verify the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a soft switching nonisolated dc/dc interleaved converter incorporating coupled inductors and switched capacitors for high step-up applications. The converter integrates the interleaved structure and winding-cross-coupled inductors technique to reduce current stress of semiconductor devices and diminish the input current ripple considerably. In addition, the interleaved converter has the automatic current sharing characteristic. The applied zero voltage transition cell provides soft switching in a wide range of load variations with a minimum number of elements. In this topology, all semiconductor devices are soft switched, having eliminated switching losses and alleviating the reverse recovery problem of the output diodes. In addition, the voltage stress across the switches is very low. The theoretical analysis and design procedure of the introduced topology are presented. Also, the proposed converter is compared to the latest similar soft switched high step-up converters. The accuracy of the theoretical analysis is validated by a 200-W prototype operating at 100 kHz. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, a novel four-phase interleaved high step-down converter is presented. The proposed converter can provide an extremely high step-down voltage conversion ratio within a moderate duty cycle. There are four main advantages of the proposed converter. First, the blocking capacitors can store energy as usual. Therefore, they are used as voltage sources to reduce the input voltage as well as to reduce the switch voltage stresses. Second, due to the charge balance of the dc blocking capacitors, the converter possesses an automatic uniform current sharing characteristic of the interleaved phases without adopting any extra circuitry. Third, due to the phase shift between the interleaved phases, the architecture provides a low output current ripple. Fourth, the number of phases can be expanded or reduced to any even phases; therefore, the converter has a wide range of applications. Finally, the operating principles and analysis of this architecture are given, and an experimental prototype is also provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed converter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A new resonant converter having low voltage stress and nearly constant efficiency against line variation for high- and wide-input-voltage applications is presented in this paper. It is similar to a three-level zero-voltage-switching pulsewidth modulation converter (TL ZVS PWMC) with two flying capacitors. In the proposed converter, however, two flying capacitors are used as the resonant capacitors, and the output voltage regulation is achieved by frequency modulation. The main advantages of the proposed converter are that, since the sum of the voltages of two resonant capacitors is constant and is equal to half of the input voltage, the voltage across each switch clamps to half of the input voltage and keeps the balance. Moreover, all main switches and rectifier diodes are softly switched under full-line and full-load conditions, and high efficiency can be constantly achieved over a wide input voltage range. These advantages solve the drawbacks on TL ZVS PWMCs. The features, operation principles, and relevant analysis results over a wide input voltage range of the proposed converter are presented in this paper. The validity of this study is confirmed by the experimental results of a prototype converter with 400–600-V input, 48-V/10-A output, and 200-kHz resonant frequency. The experimental results show that the maximum efficiency of the proposed converter is 95.08% under a full-load and a 600-V input and slightly varies across the 400–600-V input voltage range. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a new family of zero-voltage-transition (ZVT) bidirectional converters are introduced. In the proposed converters, soft-switching condition for all semiconductor elements is provided regardless of the power flow direction and without any extra voltage and current stress on the main switches. The auxiliary circuit is composed of a coupled inductor with the converter main inductor and two auxiliary switches. The auxiliary switches benefit from significantly reduced voltage stress and without requiring floating gate drive circuit. Also, by applying the synchronous rectification to the auxiliary switches body diodes, conduction losses of the auxiliary circuit are reduced. In the auxiliary circuit, the leakage inductor is used as the resonant inductor and all the magnetic components are implemented on a single core which has resulted in significant reduction of the converter volume. In the proposed converters, the reverse recovery losses of the converter-rectifying diodes are completely eliminated and hence, using the low-speed body diode of the power switch as the converter-rectifying diode is feasible. The theoretical analysis for a bidirectional buck and boost converter is presented in detail and the validity of the theoretical analysis is justified using the experimental results of a 250-W prototype converter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents high step-up dc-to-dc converter for low voltage sources such as solar photovoltaics, fuel cells, and battery banks. To achieve high voltage gain without large duty cycle operation, combination of coupled inductor and switched capacitor voltage doubler cells are used. By incorporating active clamp circuit, voltage spike due to the leakage inductance of the coupled inductor is alleviated and zero-voltage switching turn on of the main and auxiliary switch is obtained. Due to the use of MOSFETs of low voltage rating and soft turn on of the switches, conduction loss and switching losses are reduced. This improves the efficiency and power density of the converter. The proposed converter can achieve high voltage gain with reduced voltage stress on MOSFET switches and output diodes. Design and analysis of the proposed converter is carried out, and finally, a 500-W experimental prototype is built to verify theoretical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A method for extending the duty cycle range of series-input interleaved forward converter (SII-FC) is proposed in this paper. A family of novel SII-FC topologies is derived by integrating two switching legs, which belong to two forward cells, into one switching leg shared by both the two forward cells in the SII-FC. By employing the proposed method, the derived topologies have the advantages of extended duty cycle, reduced components, and conduction losses, which help to achieve high power density and high efficiency. These advantages make the SII-FC topologies suitable for such applications with wide input voltage range. A series-input interleaved two-switch forward converter (SII-TS-FC) is analyzed in detail, which is a typical SII-FC topology developed by the proposed method. It is composed of two low-voltage switching legs and a high-voltage switching leg. Detailed analysis indicates that the maximum duty cycle of the SII-TS-FC can reach 2/3, which is 1.33 times of that of the two-switch forward converter. The switches of the high-voltage leg can be soft-switched when duty cycle is less than 0.5, while the switches of the low-voltage legs can be soft-switched when duty cycle is larger than 0.5. As a result, high efficiency is achieved over a wide voltage range. In addition, the output filter can be reduced due to the interleaving operation of the two forward cells. The operational principles, characteristics, and design considerations for the proposed SII-FC are presented. Experimental results on the SII-TS-FC prototype with 200–400 V input 48 V/12 A output verify the proposed method and analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes a zero-voltage switching (ZVS) pulsewidth modulation (PWM) dc/dc converter with current double rectifiers to achieve ZVS for all switches under a wide range of load conditions and input voltages. Two three-level PWM circuits sharing the same power switches are adopted in the proposed converter to reduce the voltage stress of each MOSFET at Vin/2 and achieve load current sharing. Thus, the current stress and power rating at the secondary-side components are reduced. The current double rectifiers are used at the secondary side to partially cancel the output ripple current. Thus, the sizes of the magnetic components and output filter capacitance are reduced. Due to the resonant behavior by the resonant inductance and resonant capacitance at the transition interval, all switches are turned on at ZVS. The experimental results based on a 1-kW prototype are provided to verify the operation principle of the proposed converter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a new soft-switching dc/dc converter for high-input-voltage applications. Two half-bridge converters connected in series with interleaved asymmetric pulsewidth modulation (PWM) are adopted to limit the voltage stress of each power switch at one-half of the input dc bus voltage. In each half-bridge converter, two asymmetrical dc/dc circuits with the same active switches are connected in parallel at the output side to share the load current and reduce the current stresses of the secondary windings and rectifier diodes. Since two half-bridge converters are operated with interleaved PWM, the output ripple currents partially cancel each other so that the resultant ripple current at the output side is reduced. Active switches in the proposed circuit can be turned on at zero-voltage switching during the transition interval due to the resonant behavior by the output capacitance of MOSFETs and the leakage inductance of transformers. Experiments based on a laboratory prototype with 960-W rated power are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed converter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An active-clamp forward (ACF) converter, which is popular in low-to-medium power applications, suffers from the high-voltage stress on switches, i.e., the sum of input voltage and reset capacitor voltage. To relieve this problem, a two-switch (2-SW) ACF converter, where the voltage stresses on the main switches are clamped to either the input voltage or the reset capacitor voltage by simply employing one clamping diode and a delayed turnoff gate signal, is proposed in this paper. Therefore, in view of utilizing high-performance low-voltage switches, the proposed 2-SW ACF converter can be promising for high-input-voltage applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]