Supercapacitor assisted LDO (SCALDO) techniquean extra low frequency design approach to high efficiency DC-DC converters and how it compares with the classical switched capacitor converters

Supercapacitor assisted low dropout regulators (SCALDO) were proposed as an alternative design approach to DC-DC converters, where the supercapacitor circulation frequency (switching frequency) is in the order of few Hz to few 10s of Hz, with an output stage based on a low dropout regulator stage. For converters such as 12–5V, 5–3.3V and 5–1.5V, the technique provides efficiency improvement factors of 2, 1.33 and 3 respectively, in compared to linear converters with same input-output combinations. In a 5–1.5V SCALDO regulator, using thin profile supercapacitors in the range of fractional farads to few farads, this translates to an approximate end to end efficiency of near 90%. However, there were concerns that this patented technique is merely a variation of well-known switched capacitor (charge pump) converters. This paper is aimed at providing a broad overview of the capability of SCALDO technique with generalized theory, indicating its capabilities and limitations, and comparing the practical performance with a typical switched capacitor converter of similar current capability

A three-switch high-voltage converter

A novel single active switch two-diodes high-voltage converter is presented. This converter can operate into a capacitor-diode voltage multiplier, which offers simpler structure and control, higher efficiency, reduced electromagnetic interference (EMI), and size and weight savings compared with traditional switched-mode regulated voltage multipliers. Two significant advantages are the continuous input current and easy isolation extension. The new converter is experimentally verified. Both the steady-state and dynamic theoretical models are correlated well with the experimental dat

Morphing Switched-Capacitor Converters with Variable Conversion Ratio

High-voltage-gain and wide-input-range dc-dc converters are widely used in various electronics and industrial products such as portable devices, telecommunication, automotive, and aerospace systems. The two-stage converter is a widely adopted architecture for such applications, and it is proven to have a higher efficiency as compared with that of the single-stage converter. This paper presents a modular-cell-based morphing switched-capacitor (SC) converter for application as a front-end converter of the two-stage converter. The conversion ratio of this converter is flexible and variable and can be freely extended by increasing more SC modules. The varying conversion ratio is achieved through the morphing of the converter's structure corresponding to the amplitude of the input voltage. This converter is light and compact, and is highly efficient over a very wide range of input voltage and load conditions. Experimental work on a 25-W, 6-30-V input, 3.5-8.5-V output prototype, is performed. For a single SC module, the efficiency over the entire input voltage range is higher than 98%. Applied into the two-stage converter, the overall efficiency achievable over the entire operating range is 80% including the driver's loss

Optimal PWM control of switched-capacitor DC/DC power converters via model transformation and enhancing control techniques

Abstract—This paper presents an efficient and effective method for an optimal pulse width modulated (PWM) control of switched-capacitor DC/DC power converters. Optimal switching instants are determined based on minimizing the output ripple magnitude, the output leakage voltage and the sensitivity of the output load voltage with respect to both the input voltage and the load resistance. This optimal PWM control strategy has several advantages over conventional PWM control strategies: 1) It does not involve a linearization, so a large signal analysis is performed. 2) It guarantees the optimality. The problem is solved via both the model transformation and the optimal enhancing control techniques. A practical example of the PWM control of a switched-capacitor DC/DC power converter is presented

Modeling of Capacitor Impedance in Switching Converters

Switched capacitor (SC) converters are gaining acceptance as alternatives to traditional, inductor-based switching power converters. Proper design of SC converters requires an understanding of all loss sources and their impacts on circuit operation. In the present work, an equivalent resistance method is developed for analysis, and equivalent resistance formulae are presented for various modes of operation. Quasiresonant converters are explored and compared to standard SC converters. Comparisons to inductor-based switching power converters are made. A number of capacitor technologies are evaluated and compared for applications to both SC converters and inductor-based converters. The resulting model can be used to accurately predict and optimize converter performance in the design phase

Switched capacitor converters:a new approach for high power applications

High-power, high-voltage and high voltage-conversion ratio DC-DC converters are an enabling technology for offshore DC grids of the future. These converters are required to interface between offshore wind farms and an offshore DC grid and a key design issue is the size and weight of the converter, which significantly impacts the cost of the associated off-shore platform. In addition to this application, some rural communities, particularly in Canada, Australia and South Africa,which are located far away from the electrical power generators, can take the advantages of this technology by tapping into existing HVDC transmission line using a high voltage-conversion ratio DC-DC converter. The work described in this thesis is an investigation as to how such DC-DC converters may be realised for these applications. First a review of existing DC-DC converters was carried out to assess their suitability for the target applications. A classification of DC-DC converters into Direct and Indirect converters was proposed in this work based on the manner in which the energy is transferred from the input to the output terminal of the converter. Direct DC-DC converters, particularly Switched Capacitor(SC) converters are more promising for high-voltage, high-power and high voltage-conversion ratio applications, since the converter can interface between the low-voltage and the high-voltage terminals using low-voltage and low-power power electronic modules. Existing SC topologies were examined to identify the most promising candidate circuits for the target applications. Four SC synthesis techniques were proposed in order to derive new SC circuits from existing topologies. A new 2-Leg Ladder, modular 2-Leg Ladder and bi-pole 2-Leg Ladder were devised, which had significant benefits in terms of size and weight when compared with existing circuits. A scaled power 1 kW converter was built in the laboratory in order to validate the analysis and compare the performance of the new 2-Leg ladder circuit against a conventional Ladder circuit, where it was shown that the new circuit had higher efficiency, smaller size and lower output voltage ripple than the Ladder converter

Design of Power Switched-Capacitor Converters and Their Performance Analysis in a Soft-Charging Operation

Switched-capacitor (SC) converters have gained more interest due to their high power density and appropriateness for small circuit integration. Building a SC DC-to-DC converter with only capacitors and switches is the main reason to seek a higher power density achievement. However, the SC converters suffer dominant losses related to their capacitors and switches. These losses can be determined and optimized by calculating the converter\u27s output impedance in its two asymptotic limits. We proposed a high voltage gain and a very low output impedance power switched-capacitor converter (PSC) with a lower number of components compared to other step-up switched-capacitor topologies. The high output efficiency and the higher power density are two fundamental aspects of the PSC converter. We can eliminate the current transient by applying the soft-charging technique that results a higher power density and a higher efficiency in PSC. The soft-charging operation is more preferable to the soft-switching technique (resonant operation) since it does not require any auxiliary components. Furthermore, soft-charging helps to resize capacitors and reduce the switching frequency of the PSC converter. Furthermore, a split-phase control design is proposed to achieve the complete soft-charging operation in a PSC. The control diagram was designed for a 1-to-4 PSC (two levels of the PSC) which controls eight switches to exhibit eight modes of operation. The complete soft-charging accomplishes a 96% efficiency due to the lower output impedance and the dead time switching. LT-spice software has been used to verify the proposed control, and the results were compared with hard-charging and incomplete soft-charging operations. In this research, we also proposed a two-level power switched-capacitor boost converter (PSC-boost) for a high voltage gain application by integrating a PSC converter and a conventional boost converter. The PSC switched-capacitors and the conventional boost converter are respectively cascaded as a primary and a secondary side of the proposed converter. Without alerting of the secondary side (conventional boost), the conversion ratio can be increased by adding more switched-capacitors cells. The proposed converter similarly acts as an MBC; however, it can maintain the rated voltage gain at a higher duty cycle. Unlike the MBC converter, the simulated voltage gain is closer to the calculated voltage gain for PSC-boost converter. In addition to the switched-capacitors insertion, a switched inductor model is used instead of the single inductor in the traditional boost converter. Five switches, five capacitors, seven diodes, and three inductors are used to build a PSC-boost switched-inductor converter. The PSC-boost converter accomplishes 94% efficiency which a higher rated power

An Overview of Fully Integrated Switching Power Converters Based on Switched-Capacitor versus Inductive Approach and Their Advanced Control Aspects

This paper reviews and discusses the state of the art of integrated switched-capacitor and integrated inductive power converters and provides a perspective on progress towards the realization of efficient and fully integrated DC–DC power conversion. A comparative assessment has been presented to review the salient features in the utilization of transistor technology between the switched-capacitor and switched inductor converter-based approaches. First, applications that drive the need for integrated switching power converters are introduced, and further implementation issues to be addressed also are discussed. Second, different control and modulation strategies applied to integrated switched-capacitor (voltage conversion ratio control, duty cycle control, switching frequency modulation, Ron modulation, and series low drop out) and inductive converters (pulse width modulation and pulse frequency modulation) are then discussed. Finally, a complete set of integrated power converters are related in terms of their conditions and operation metrics, thereby allowing a categorization to provide the suitability of converter technologies

A Charge Pump Architecture with High Power-Efficiency and Low Output Ripple Noise in 0.5 μm CMOS Process Technology

The demand of portable consumer electronic devices is skyrocketing day-by-day. Such modern integrated microsystems have several functional blocks which require different voltages to operate adequately. DC-DC converter circuits are used to generate different voltage domains for different functional blocks on large integrated microsystems from a single voltage battery-operated power supply. Charge pump is an inductorless DC-DC converter which generates higher positive voltage or lower voltage or negative voltage from the applied reference voltage. A charge pump circuit uses switches for charge transfer action and capacitors for charge storage. The thesis presents a high power-efficiency charge pump architecture with low output ripple noise in the AMI N-well 0.5 µm CMOS process technology. The switching action of the proposed charge pump architecture is controlled by a dual phase non-overlapping clock system. In order to achieve high power-efficiency, the power losses due to the leakage currents, the finite switch resistance and the imperfect charge transfer between the capacitors are taken into consideration and are minimized by proper switching of the charge transfer switches and by using different auxiliary circuits. To achieve low output ripple noise, the continuous current pumping method is proposed and implemented in the charge pump architecture. The proposed charge pump can operate over the wide input voltage range varying from 3 V to 7 V with the power conversion efficiency of 90%. The loading current drive capability of the proposed charge pump is ranging from 0 to 45 mA. The worst case output ripple voltage is less than 25 mV. To prove the concept, the design of the proposed charge pump is simulated rigorously over different process, temperature and voltage corners

Soft-Switched Step-Up Medium Voltage Power Converters

With a ten-year average annual growth rate of 19 percent, wind energy has been the largest source of new electricity generation for the past decade. Typically, an offshore wind farm has a medium voltage ac (MVac) grid that collects power from individual wind turbines. Since the output voltage of a wind turbine is too low (i.e., typically 400 690 V) to be connected to the MVac grid (i.e., 20 40 kV), a heavy line-frequency transformer is used to step up the individual turbines output voltage to the MV level. To eliminate the need for bulky MVac transformers, researchers are gravitating towards the idea of replacing the MVac grid with a medium voltage dc (MVdc) grid, so that MV step-up transformers are replaced by MV step-up power electronic converters that operate at the medium frequency range with much lower size and weight. This dissertation proposes a class of modular step-up transformerless MV SiC-based power converters with soft-switching capability for wind energy conversion systems with MVdc grid. This dissertation consists of two parts: the first part focuses on the development of two novel groups of step-up isolated dc-dc MV converters that utilize various step-up resonant circuits and soft-switched high voltage gain rectifier modules. An integrated magnetic design approach is also presented to combine several magnetic components together in the modular high voltage gain rectifiers. The second part of this dissertation focuses on the development of several three-phase ac-dc step-up converters with integrated active power factor correction. In particular, a bridgeless input ac-dc rectifier is also proposed to combine with the devised step-up transformerless dc-dc converters (presented in the first part) to form the three-phase soft-switched ac-dc step-up voltage conversion unit. In each of the presented modular step-up converter configurations, variable frequency control is used to regulate the output dc voltage of each converter module. The operating principles and characteristics of each presented converter are provided in detail. The feasibility and performance of all the power converter concepts presented in this dissertation are verified through simulation results on megawatts (MW) design examples, as well as experimental results on SiC-based laboratory-scale proof-of-concept prototypes