• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.1099-1107
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• 2019

A soft switching converter with wide voltage range operation is investigated in this paper. A series resonant converter is implemented to achieve a high circuit efficiency with soft switching characteristics on power switches and rectifier diodes. To improve the weakness of the narrow voltage range in LLC converters, an alternating current (ac) power switch is used on the primary side to select a half-bridge or full-bridge resonant circuit to implement 4:1 voltage range operation. On the secondary-side, another ac power switch is adopted to select a full-wave rectifier or voltage-doubler rectifier to achiever an additional 2:1 output voltage range. Therefore, the proposed resonant converter has the capacity for 8:1 (320V~40V) wide output voltage operation. A single-stage hybrid resonant converter is employed in the study circuit instead of a two-stage dc converter to achiever wide voltage range operation. As a result, the study converter has better converter efficiency. The theoretical analysis and circuit characteristics are verified by experiments with a prototype circuit.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.975-984
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• 2018

This work presents a high efficiency phase shifted full bridge (PSFB) DC-DC converter for use in the second stage of a battery charger for neighborhood electrical vehicle (EV) applications. In the design of the converter, Lithium-ion battery cells are preferred due to their high voltage and current rates, which provide a high power density. This requires wide range output voltage regulation for PSFB converter operation. In addition, the battery charger works with a light load when the battery charge voltage reaches its maximum value. The soft switching of the PSFB converter depends on the dead time optimization and load condition. As a result, the converter has to work with soft switching at a wide range output voltage and under light conditions to reach high efficiency. The operation principles of the PSFB converter for the continuous current mode (CCM) and the discontinuous current mode (DCM) are defined. The performance of the PSFB converter is analyzed in detail based on wide range output voltage and load conditions in terms of high efficiency. In order to validate performance analysis, a prototype is built with 42-54 V / 15 A output values at a 200 kHz switching frequency. The measured maximum efficiency values are obtained as 94.4% and 76.6% at full and at 2% load conditions, respectively.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.736-747
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• 2009

A new type of single-phase Z-source AC/AC converter based on a single-phase matrix converter is proposed in this paper. The proposed single-phase Z-source AC/AC converter has unique features; namely that the output voltage can be bucked and in-phase/out-of-phase with the input voltage; that the output voltage can be boosted and in-phase/out-of-phase with the input voltage. The converter employs a safe-commutation strategy to conduct along a continuous current path, which results in the elimination of voltage spikes on switches without the need for a snubber circuit. The operating principles of the proposed single-phase Z-source AC/AC converter are described, and a circuit analysis is provided. To verify the performance of the proposed converter, a laboratory prototype based on a TMS320F2812 DSP was constructed. The simulation and the experimental results verified that the output voltage can be bucked-boosted and in-phase with the input voltage, and that the output voltage can be bucked-boosted and out-of-phase with the input voltage.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.115-124
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• 2010

In this paper, a simple yet efficient auto mode-hop ripple control structure for buck converters with light load operation enhancement is proposed. The converter, which operates under a wide range of input and output voltages, makes use of a state-dependent hysteretic comparator. Depending on the output current, the converter automatically changes the operating mode. This improves the efficiency and reduces the output voltage ripple for a wide range of output currents for given input and output voltages. The sensitivity of the output voltage to the circuit elements is less than 14%, which is seven times lower than that for conventional converters. To assess the efficiency of the proposed converter, it is designed and implemented with commercially available components. The converter provides an output voltage in the range of 0.9V to 31V for load currents of up to 3A when the input voltage is in the range of 5V to 32V. Analytical design expressions which model the operation of the converter are also presented. This circuit can be implemented easily in a single chip with an external inductor and capacitor for both fixed and variable output voltage applications.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.142-151
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• 2020

This paper presents a DC/DC LLC resonant converter with wide input/output voltage gain characteristics and its control method for efficiency improvement. For a wide input/output voltage gain characteristics without designing small transformer magnetization inductance, the proposed converter changes the topology into three modes of operation according to the main switch switching pattern. In each operating mode, variable LINK voltage modulation and frequency modulation were performed to control output voltage and improve operating efficiency. A prototype of a 5-kW DC/DC LLC resonant converter was built and tested to verify the validity and applicability of the proposed converter.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.31-40
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• 2017

A novel voltage-fed single-stage power factor correction (PFC) full-bridge converter based on asymmetric phase-shifted control for battery chargers is proposed in this paper. The attractive feature of the proposed converter is that it can operate in a wide output voltage range without an output low-frequency ripple, which is indispensable in battery charger applications. Meanwhile, the converter can maintain a high power factor and a controllable dc bus voltage over a wide output voltage range. In this paper, the realization of PFC and the operation principle of asymmetric phase-shifted control are given. A small-signal analysis of the proposed single-stage power factor correction (PFC) full-bridge converter is performed. Experimental results obtained from a 1kW experimental prototype are given to validate the feasibility of the proposed converter. The PF is higher than 0.97 over the entire output voltage range with the proposed control strategy.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2012.07a
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• pp.343-344
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• 2012

In high power PV generation system, the solar cell normally generates wide output voltage depending on the insolation, cell's temperature and shade effect. This paper will propose a high efficiency converter allowing the wide input voltage to supply stable voltage with the controller and operation for the PV generation system. The proposed converter consists of two stages comprising SEPIC with a coupled inductor and LLC, which generates 24 V of output at the final output terminal. In this paper, a design method and experimental results with a test-bed of 50 W will be presented to validate the proposed converter.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.165-173
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• 2022

The electrification trend of mobility increases every year due to the development of power semiconductor and battery technology. Accordingly, the development and distribution of fast chargers for electric vehicles (EVs) are in demand. In this study, we propose a design and implementation method of an LLC converter for fast chargers. Two 15 kW LLC converters are configured in parallel to have 30 kW rated output power, and the control algorithm and driving sequence are designed accordingly and verified. In addition, the improved power conversion efficiency is confirmed through zero-voltage switching (ZVS) of the LLC converter and reduction of turn-off loss through snubber capacitors. The implemented 30 kW LLC converters show a wide output voltage range of 200-950 V. Experiments applying various load conditions verify the converter performance.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.1619-1626
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• 2018

The output power of most facilities for renewable energy generation is unstable due to external environmental conditions. In distributed power systems with two or more sources, a stable output can be achieved with the complementary power supply among the different input sources. In this paper, a double-input DC-DC converter with a wide-input-voltage-range is proposed for renewable energy generation. This converter has the following advantages: the circuit is simple, and the input voltage range is wide and the fault tolerance is excellent. The operation modes and the steady-state analysis are examined. Finally, experimental results are illustrated to verify the correctness of the analysis and the feasibility of the proposed converter.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2015.07a
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• pp.299-300
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• 2015

This paper proposes current-fed bi-directional DC-DC converter using a resonance (CF-BCR) with wide output voltage range. The steady state analysis and operation principles of CF-BCR are introduced. To increase the output voltage range with satisfying soft switching condition, switching frequency, duty and number of times of the resonance are controlled. The proposed converter and its control method are verified by theoretical analysis and PSIM simulation.