• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.379-384
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• 2012

This paper presents the power source of wireless sensor node (WSN) using supercapacitors and a solar cell. Supercapacitors have high lifetime cycling compared to that of batteries. Supercapacitors are connected in series to achieve higher voltage and a voltage balancing circuit is required to ensure that no individual cell goes overvoltage. We employ an active balancing circuit that draws minimal current by using transistors. A diode is connected in series with each supercapacitor. A new balancing circuit that equalize the cells-voltage reduces energy consumption of supercapacitors. Voltage of operating WSN is applied 2.2-3.3V by DC/DC converter and supercapacitor voltage 2.2-5.1V. Maximum operating time of wireless sensor node is about 16 hours in full charging.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.739-747
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• 2012

This paper applies carrier phase shifted pulse-width modulation (CPS-PWM) to transformerless modular multilevel converters (MMC) to improve the output spectrum. Because the MMC topology is characterized by the double-star connection of six legs consisting of cascaded modular chopper cells with floating capacitors, the balance control of the DC-link capacitor voltage is essential for safe operation. This paper presents a leg-balancing control strategy to achieve DC-link voltage balance under all operating conditions. This strategy based on circulating current decoupling control focused on DC-link balancing between the upper and lower legs in each phase pair by considering the six legs as three independent phase-pairs. Experiments are implemented on a 100-V 3-kVA downscaled prototype. The experimental results show that the proposed leg-balancing control is both effective and practical.

• Current Optics and Photonics
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.617-626
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• 2021

A parallel Monte Carlo photon migration algorithm for graphics processing units that implements an improved load-balancing strategy is presented. Conventional parallel Monte Carlo photon migration algorithms suffer from a computational bottleneck due to their reliance on a simple load-balancing strategy that does not take into account the different length of the mean free paths of the photons. In this paper, path-partition load balancing is proposed to eliminate this computational bottleneck based on a mathematical formula that parallelizes the photon path tracing process, which has previously been considered non-parallelizable. The performance of the proposed algorithm is tested using three-dimensional photon migration simulations of a human skin model.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.9-17
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• 2022

The series-connected semiconductor devices structure is one way to achieve a high voltage rating. However, a problem with voltage imbalance exists in which different voltages are applied to the series-connected switches. This paper proposed a new voltage balancing technique that controls the turn-off delay time of the switch by adding one bipolar junction transistor to the gate turn-off path. The validity of the proposed method is proved through simulation and experiment. The proposed active gate driver not only enables voltage balancing across a variety of current ranges but also has a greater voltage balancing performance compared with conventional RC snubber methods.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.332-341
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• 2014

A cascaded H-bridge multi-level STATCOM(STATic synchronous COMpensator), which is composed of many cell inverters with independent dc-sources, generates inevitably dc-side voltage unbalance among phases when it compensates unbalanced load. It comes from the difference of flowing active power in each phase when this compensator makes negative-sequence current to eliminate the unbalance of source-side current. However, this unbalance can be controlled by injecting zero-sequence current which is decoupled with grid currents, so the compensator can work well during this balancing process. Both a feedback control algorithm, which produces zero-sequence current proportional to dc-side voltage unbalance within each phase, and a feedforward control algorithm, which makes zero-sequence current directly from the compensator's negative-sequence current, were proposed. The dc-side voltage of each phase can be controlled stably by these proposed algorithms in both steady-state and transient, so the compensator can have fast response to satisfy control performance under rapid changing load. These balancing controllers were implemented and verified via simulation and experiment.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.52 no.5
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• pp.58-65
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• 2015

This paper presents the design of an implantable stimulation IC intended for neural prosthetic devices using $0.18-{\mu}m$ standard CMOS technology. The proposed single-channel biphasic current stimulator prototype is designed to deliver up to 1 mA of current to the tissue-equivalent $10-k{\Omega}$ load using 12.8-V supply voltage. To utilize only low-voltage standard CMOS transistors in the design, transistor stacking with dynamic gate biasing technique is used for reliable operation at high-voltage. In addition, active charge balancing circuit is used to maintain zero net charge at the stimulation site over the complete stimulation cycle. The area of the total stimulator IC consisting of DAC, current stimulation output driver, level-shifters, digital logic, and active charge balancer is $0.13mm^2$ and is suitable to be applied for multi-channel neural prosthetic devices.

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.288-298
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• 1995

Load balancing attempts to improve the performance of a distributed computing system by transferring some of the workload of a congested site to others. A load balancing scheme that supports both the source-initiated and the server- initiated load balancing is proposed in this paper. It can model both the m/m/1 queue(no load balancing) and the m/m/n queue(perfect load balancing) as the extreme State variables are replicated into every site, and copy consistency constraints are relaxed more weakly. We propose weak copy consistency constraints which correlate the outdated state information to that of the current state. We also derive sufficient conditions under which each scheduler can guarantee the load balancing without communication Using this model, the problem of load balancing is converted to that of maintaining the consistency of states and communication overhead becomes less than that of the bidding algorithm. The scheme is simulated by event tracing, compared to the two extreme cases and the bidding algorithm. The results show that the mean response time and the number of messages are reduced by 0-35% and 40-100% respectively, compared with the bidding algorithm. Finally the effects of some system parameters are described.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.351-356
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• 2010

A new current-balancing multi-channel LED driver is proposed in this paper. The conventional LED driver system consists of three cascaded power conversion stages and its driver stage has the same number of expensive boost converters as those of the LED channels. On the other hand, the proposed LED driver system consists of two cascaded power stages and its driver stage requires only passive devices instead of expensive boost converters. Nevertheless, all of the currents through multi-channel LEDs can be well balanced. Therefore, it features a smaller system size, improved efficiency, and lower cost. To confirm the validity of the proposed driver, its operation and performance are verified on a prototype for a 46" LCD TV.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.348-355
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• 2022

A bipolar DC distribution system suffers from an imbalance in voltages when asymmetric loads are connected at the outputs. Dedicated voltage balancers are required to address the imbalance in bipolar voltage levels. However, additional components eventually increase the cost and decrease the efficiency and power density of the system. Therefore, to deal with the imbalance in output voltages without adding any extra components, this study presents a coupled inductor-based voltage balancing technique with a dual-output CLL resonant converter. The proposed coupled inductor does not require extra magnetic components to balance the output voltages because it is the result of resonant inductors of the CLL tank circuit. It can also avoid complex control schemes applied to voltage balancing. Moreover, with the proposed coupled inductor, the CLL converter acquires good features including zero voltage and zero current switching. Detailed analysis of the proposed coupled inductor is presented with different load conditions. A 3.6-kW hardware prototype was built and tested to validate the performance of the proposed coupled inductor-based voltage balancing technique.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.256-262
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• 2017

This paper presents the control algorithm of a single-phase AC/DC/AC PWM converter for the linear compressor of a refrigerator. The AC/DC/AC converter consists of a full-bridge PWM converter for the control of the input power factor and a half-bridge PWM inverter for the control of the single-phase linear compressor. At the DC-link of this topology, two capacitors are connected in series. These DC-link voltages must be balanced for safe operation. Thus, a new control method of DC voltage balancing for the half-bridge PWM inverter is proposed. The balancing algorithm uses the Integral-Proportional controller and inserts the DC-offset current at the Proportional-Resonant current controller of the inverter to solve the DC-link unbalanced voltages between the two capacitors. The proposed algorithm can be easily implemented without much computation and additional hardware circuit. The usefulness of the proposed algorithm is verified through several experiments.