Analysis, Synthesis and Simulation of Compact Two-channel Boost Converter for Portable Equipments Operating with a Battery or Solar Cell

AbstractThis paper is intended to help engineers and designers of high power industrial application such as engineers of power systems as well as control engineers and designers of very low power industrial applications such as designers of computer motherboards and other microcomputer circuits supplied from alternative energy sources or battery via boost converters.Alternative energy source systems such as solar-cells or photovoltaic systems (PV) are progressively becoming more popular. In these applications, it is often required to convert the generated low DC voltage to a higher variable voltage prior to converting it into an AC to be compatible with the electric grid and common appliances. Usually a boost converter is used to step up the d.c. voltage generated at the outputs of such systems [1]. The basic configuration of boost converters usually used for this purpose suffers from some drawbacks just like high ripple in their output currents and voltages which increases the losses of the system and makes their control complicated and their response to the variation in the input voltage and load parameters unstable.To eliminate these drawbacks, this paper introduces a two-channel boost regulator with uncoupled smoothing reactors. Detailed analysis, design, control strategy and simulation have been proposed in this paper to investigate the advantages of using the two-channel connection with uncoupled smoothing reactors.It has been proved throughout this paper that two-channel configuration of boost converter helps increasing the output power of the converter, filtering out the harmonic content from its output and input, making their control easier and more efficient, increasing the operating frequency of the converter and thus decreasing the size of the components and filters used in the circuit.Moreover, the paper deals with voltage control strategy that usually used for such systems thus to regulate the boost converter to obtain a robust output current and voltage. Simulation results show that voltage mode control technique provides good current and voltage regulation of boost converters and is more feasible for the chopper up conversion technique of these converters

An efficient system for preprocessing confocal corneal images for subsequent analysis

A confocal microscope provides a sequence of images of the various corneal layers and structures at different depths from which medical clinicians can extract clinical information on the state of health of the patient's cornea. Preprocessing the confocal corneal images to make them suitable for analysis is very challenging due the nature of these images and the amount of the noise present in them. This paper presents an efficient preprocessing approach for confocal corneal images consisting of three main steps including enhancement, binarisation and refinement. Improved visualisation, cell counts and measurements of cell properties have been achieved through this system and an interactive graphical user interface has been developed