P$^{3}$DCT—Partial-Power Pre-Regulated DC Transformer

Abstract

In this paper, a new approach to regulate the output voltage of a resonant, constant voltage transfer ratio 380 V/48 V isolated dc–dc converter is presented. Rather than applying variable frequency control to the resonant converter, which would result in reactive power processing and a more complicated electromagnetic compatibility filter design, the converter remains in its optimal operating point all time and an additional partial-power (PP) processing auxiliary converter is used to tightly regulate the output voltage. The PP converter, supplied through a tertiary winding of the resonant converter's transformer, regulates the output by adding or subtracting voltage from the dc input and has only a marginal impact on the overall efficiency of the dc–dc converter. The principal of operation is explained in detail including Sankey diagrams to illustrate the power processing of the converter and a feedback control system is proposed to tightly regulate the 48 V output voltage. A hardware demonstrator rated at 1.5 kW is implemented to cope with input voltage variations between 340 and 420 V and experimental results are provided showing that the output voltage can be kept within $\pm {1}{\%}$ of the nominal 48 V even under harsh input voltage and load transients. The realized dc–dc converter with PP pre-regulation features an overall efficiency of 97.7 $\%$ at rated power and a power density of 8.6 kWdm $^{-3}$ (141w/ $^{3}$ in).