• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.55 no.12
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• pp.511-517
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• 2006

The key issues in high power, high energy applications such as electromagnetic launchers include safety, reliability, flexibility, efficiency, compactness, and cost. To explore some of the issues, a control scheme for a large current wave-forming was designed, built and experimentally verified using a 2.4MJ pulse power system (PPS). The PPS was made up of eight capacitors bank unit, each containing six capacitors connected in parallel. Therefore there were 48 capacitors in total, with ratings of 22kV and 50kJ each. Each unit is charged through a charging switch that is operated by air pressure. For discharging each unit has a triggered vacuum switch (TVS) with ratings of 200kA and 250kV. Hence, flexibility of a large current wave-forming can be obtained by controlling the charging voltage and the discharging times. The whole control system includes a personal computer(PC), RS232 and RS485 pseudo converter, electric/optical signal converters and eight 80C196KC micro-controller based capacitor-bank module(CBM) controllers. Hence, the PC based controller can set the capacitor charging voltages and the TVS trigger timings of each CBM controller for the current wave-forming. It also monitors and records the system status data. We illustrated that our control scheme was able to generate the large current pulse flexibly and safely by experiments. The our control scheme minimize the use of optical cables without reducing EMI noise immunity and reliability, this is resulting in cost reduction. Also, the reliability was increased by isolating ground doubly, it reduced drastically the interference of the large voltage pulse induced by the large current pulse. This paper contains the complete control scheme and details of each subsystem unit.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.143-153
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• 2014

This paper presents a novel application of LCC resonant converter for 60kW EV fast charger and describes development of the high efficiency 60kW EV fast charger. The proposed converter has the advantage of improving the system efficiency especially at the rated load condition because it can reduce the conduction loss by improving the resonance current shape as well as the switching loss by increasing lossless snubber capacitance. Additionally, the simple gate driver circuit suitable for proposed topology is designed. Distinctive features of the proposed converter were analyzed depending on the operation modes and detail design procedure of the 10kW EV fast charger converter module using proposed converter topology were described. The proposed converter and the gate driver were identified through PSpice simulation. The 60kW EV fast charger which generates output voltage ranges from 50V to 500V and maximum 150A of output currents using six parallel operated 10kW converter modules were designed and implemented. Using 60kW fast charger, the charging experiments for three types of high-capacity batteries were performed which have a different charging voltage and current. From the simulation and experimental results, it is verified that the proposed converter topology can be effectively used as main converter topology for EV fast charger.

• Journal of Semiconductor Engineering
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.13-30
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• 2020

Radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting technology have become a reliable and promising alternative to extend the lifetime of power-constrained wireless networks by eliminating the need for batteries. This emerging technology enables the low-power wireless devices to be self-sustaining and eco-friendly by scavenging RF energy from ambient environment or dedicated energy sources. These attributes make RF energy harvesting technology feasible and attractive to an extended range of applications. However, despite being the most reliable energy harvesting technology, there are several challenges (especially power conversion efficiency, output DC voltage and sensitivity) poised for the implementation of RF energy harvesting systems. In this article, a detailed literature on RF energy harvesting technology has been surveyed to provide guidance for RF energy harvesters design. Since signal strength of the received RF power is limited and weak, high efficiency state-of-the-art RF energy harvesters are required to design for providing sufficient DC supply voltage to wireless networks. Therefore, various designs and their trade-offs with comprehensive analysis for RF energy harvesters have been discussed. This paper can serve as a good reference for the researchers to catch new research topics in the field of RF energy harvesting.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.17-23
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• 2020

This paper proposes a simulation model using an equivalent circuit for the development of an MMC system. The MMC has been chosen as the most suitable topology for high voltage power transmission, such as a voltage-type HVDC, and it has dozens to hundreds of sub-modules in the form of a half-bridge or full-bridge connected in series. A simulation study is essential for the development of an MMC algorithm. On the other hand, it is virtually impossible to construct and implement MMC simulation models, including hundreds or thousands of switching devices. Therefore, this paper presents an MMC equivalent model, which is easily expandable and implemented by modeling the dynamic characteristics. The voltage and current equation of the equivalent circuit was calculated using the direction of the arm current and switching signal. The model was implemented on Matlab/Simulink. In this paper, to show the validity of the model developed using Matlab/Simulink, the simulation results of a five-level MMC using the real switching element and the proposed equivalent model are shown. The validity of the proposed model was verified by showing that the current and voltage waveform in the two models match each other.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.82-88
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• 2009

This paper is analyzed for a step up-down DC/DC chopper of high efficiency added electric isolation. The converters of high efficiency are generally made that the power loss of the used semiconductor switching devices is minimized. To achieve high efficiency system, the proposed chopper is constructed by using a partial resonant circuit. The control switches using in the chopper are operated with soft switching by partial resonant method. The control switches are operated without increasing their voltage and current stresses by the soft switching technology. The result is that the switching loss is very low and the efficiency of the chopper is high. The proposed chopper is also added electric isolation which is used a pulse transformer. When the power conversion system is required electric isolation, the proposed chopper is adopted with the converter system development of high efficiency. The soft switching operation and the system efficiency of the proposed chopper are verified by digital simulation and experimental results.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.7-17
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• 2014

Power electronics modules are semiconductor components that are widely used in airplanes, trains, automobiles, and energy generation and conversion facilities. In particular, insulated gate bipolar transistors(IGBT) have been widely utilized in high power and fast switching applications for power management including power supplies, uninterruptible power systems, and AC/DC converters. In these days, IGBT are the predominant power semiconductors for high current applications in electrical and hybrid vehicles application. In these application environments, the physical conditions are often severe with strong electric currents, high voltage, high temperature, high humidity, and vibrations. Therefore, IGBT module packages involves a number of challenges for the design engineer in terms of reliability. Thermal and thermal-mechanical management are critical for power electronics modules. The failure mechanisms that limit the number of power cycles are caused by the coefficient of thermal expansion mismatch between the materials used in the IGBT modules. All interfaces in the module could be locations for potential failures. Therefore, a proper thermal design where the temperature does not exceed an allowable limit of the devices has been a key factor in developing IGBT modules. In this paper, we discussed the effects of various package materials on heat dissipation and thermal management, as well as recent technology of the new package materials.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.269-278
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• 2020

In this paper, two types of DC/DC converters in a hydrogen fuel cell hybrid railway vehicle system, which serve to charge high-voltage battery and supply power to an inverter for driving a driving motor, were compared and analyzed. A two-level interleaving boost converter and a three-level boost converter were compared and analyzed, and a theoretical design method was proposed to have an efficiency characteristic of over 95%. In addition, a digital controller design method considering the digital phase delay component of DSP (TMS320F28335) is presented. Finally, the validity of the theoretical design of the converter with 20kW power was verified through static and dynamic experiments respectively.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.454-461
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• 2016

A maximum power point tracking (MPPT) system with fast-tracked time and high power efficiency is presented in this paper. The proposed MPPT system uses an unbounded binary search (UBS) algorithm that continuously tracks the maximum power point (MPP) with a binary system to follow the MPP under rapid-weather-change conditions. The proposed algorithm can decide the correct direction of the MPPT system while comparing the previous power point with the present power point. And then, by fixing the MPP until finding the next MPP, there is no oscillation of voltage MPP, which maximizes the overall power efficiency of the photovoltaic module. With these advantages, this proposed UBS is able to detect the MPP more effectively. This MPPT system is based on a boost converter with a micro-control unit to control analog-to-digital converters and pulse width modulation. Analysis of this work and experimental results show that the proposed UBS MPPT provides fast, accurate tracking with no oscillation in situations where weather rapidly changes and shadow is caused by all sorts of things. The tracking time is reduced by 87.3% and 66.1% under dynamic-state and steady-state operation, respectively, as compared with the conventional 7-bit perturb and observe technique.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.242-252
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• 2017

This paper deals with the blocking of DC-fault current during DC cable short-circuit conditions in HVDC (High-Voltage DC) transmission systems utilizing Modular Multilevel Converters (MMCs), where a new SubModule (SM) topology circuit for the MMC is proposed. In this SM circuit, an additional Insulated-Gate Bipolar Translator (IGBT) is required to be connected at the output terminal of a conventional SM with a half-bridge structure, hereafter referred to as HBSM, where the anti-parallel diodes of additional IGBTs are used to block current from the grid to the DC-link side. Compared with the existing MMCs based on full-bridge (FB) SMs, the hybrid topologies of HBSM and FBSM, and the clamp-double SMs, the proposed topology offers a lower cost and lower power loss while the fault current blocking capability in the DC short-circuit conditions is still provided. The effectiveness of the proposed topology has been validated by simulation results obtained from a 300-kV 300-MW HVDC transmission system and experimental results from a down-scaled HVDC system in the laboratory.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.513-518
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• 2016

The piezoelectric actuating device is known for its large power density and simple structure. It can generate a larger force than a conventional actuator and has also wide bandwidth with fast response in a compact size. To control the piezoelectric actuator, we need an analog signal conditioning circuit as well as digital microcontrollers. Conventional microcontrollers are not equipped with an analog part and need digital-to-analog converters, which makes the system bulky compared with the small size of piezoelectric devices. To overcome these weaknesses, we are developing a single-chip controller that can handle analog and digital signals simultaneously using mixed-signal FPGA technology. This gives more flexibility than traditional fixed-function microcontrollers, and the control speed can be increased greatly due to the parallel processing characteristics of the FPGA. In this paper, we developed a floating-point multiplier, PWM generator, 80-kHz power control loop, and 1-kHz position feedback control loop using a single mixed-signal FPGA. It takes only 50 ns for single floating-point multiplication. The PWM generator gives two outputs to control the charging and discharging of the high-voltage output capacitor. Through experimentation and simulation, it is demonstrated that the designed control loops work properly in a real environment.