Investigation of the trade‐off between switching losses and EMI generation in Gaussian S‐shaping for high‐power IGBT switching transients by active voltage control

Abstract

Over three decades of development effort has brought insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) technology to a high-level of maturity. IGBT converters have been widely used in industry. However, the high-speed switching transient of the IGBT-freewheel diode chopper cell causes high-level electromagnetic interference (EMI). Electromagnetic compatibility requirements are normally taken into account by utilising costly EMI filters or shielding on the load and supply side. The risk of this traditional method is to incur a delay in commercialising the converters since identification of the failure causes, modifications, and successfully re-testing are required. A promising alternative is to constrain the EMI at source by introducing active voltage control technique and shaping the IGBT switching transient into a sophisticated ‘S’-shape. Previously, IGBT switching waveforms have been successfully shaped into an advanced Gaussian ‘S’-shape with the EMI greatly reduced. In this study, the authors further investigated the trade-off between EMI generation and switching losses in such an S-shaping method. The investigation was carried out in an accurate physical IGBT/diode model that is able to accurately simulate the device switching transient. From the results, it can be seen that by using the Gaussian S-shaping method the trade-off between EMI and switching losses could be much improved.