Design Of Power Electronic Circuits Research Articles

Importance of low power electronic circuit design and its impact on energy consumption

<p class="MDPI16affiliation">In the modern world, Integrated Circuits (ICs) are an essential component of any electronic device, and it is practically impossible to imagine a world without them. When addressing energy consumption or environmental issues, many people, including researchers, tend to focus solely on power plants. However, today, there are billions of electronic devices, each containing numerous ICs, such as mobile phones, tablets, televisions, laptops, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, cars, and more. In other words, a large portion of our modern energy consumption is attributed to electronic devices. Thus, reducing power consumption in each of these devices could significantly impact global energy consumption and environmental pollution. This paper emphasizes the importance of low-power Integrated Circuits and their potential to reduce worldwide energy consumption. It also briefly explores relevant technologies that contribute to energy efficiency in circuits, avoiding unnecessary complexities.</p>

Application of power electronic circuit design based on BP artificial neural network in environmental monitoring

Abstract Our natural resources have played an important role in building our economy. In addition to the number one energy resource, oil, electric energy is also the best quality and much in demand by society in the history of human civilization. It is because electrical energy can be fully developed and applied by society that the construction of human spiritual civilization has entered industrialization and high-tech information technology. The transmission and application of electric energy has been recognized by society, but how can we make it more reasonable and efficient for easy utilization. In order to solve the problem of how complex power electronic circuit devices can be more widely used with improved technology. This paper establishes the error estimation model of intelligent circuit from data collection and data prediction preprocessing, then proposes to optimize the number of nodes in the hidden layer by using particle swarm optimization algorithm to address the limitations of the traditional BP neural network, and uses the optimized number of nodes in the hidden layer to build a BP neural network structure to train the training sample data, and calculates the error data of the intelligent circuit based on the trained BP neural network to test the sample data. The method established in this paper is used to perform the evaluation of intelligent circuit operation errors. The simulation example shows that the established model can effectively evaluate the smart circuit operation error, and the evaluation accuracy is significantly improved compared with the traditional evaluation method.

Index Matrices—Based Software Implementation of Power Electronic Circuit Design

This article aims to present a comprehensive approach with corresponding software that uses index matrices. They have been developed by the authors for an automated model-based design. One of the main goals of this paper is to propose a simple model solving technique for powering electronic devices (particularly, for all subsystems: power supplies, static power converters, electric filters, electrical loads, control systems, etc.). Index matrices, which contain first-order discrete dynamical system parameters, with real numbers as elements, are constructed in order so that voltages, amperages, and discrete values can be calculated. Simulations on a three-phase converter, as well as simulations on buck and boost DC-DC converters with PI controllers, are presented. The function of the proposed software (with examples on the aforementioned devices) is considered, and diagrams of its basic programming classes are shown. The latter draws electronic schemes and their respective graphics, and provides important characteristics. Simulink is used to verify results. Advantages of the proposed approach are a higher speed of calculations (compared to Simulink, due to a lack of differential equations) and a simpler handling of various electronic components. Additionally, a computational scalability is demonstrated.

Guest Editorial Special Issue on Design and Testing Methods of Power Electronics Components and Circuits

Safe and reliable operation is always a crucial consideration in many important applications of power electronics. Nowadays, the working conditions or mission profiles of power electronics components/systems are becoming intensive and complicated. In order to ensure cost-effectiveness with more confidence in the safety and reliability performances, it is important to understand the loading and failure behaviors, as well as the limits of components/circuits in practical use. Under this scenario, the comprehensive verification and optimization from components up to systems are essential, especially when the power level is increasing and the competition in cost and performance is becoming severe in various applications.

Supercapacitor-Assisted Techniques and Supercapacitor-Assisted Loss Management Concept: New Design Approaches to Change the Roadmap of Power Conversion Systems

All electrical and electronic devices require access to a suitable energy source. In a portable electronic product, such as a cell phone, an energy storage unit drives a complex array of power conversion stages to generate multiple DC voltage rails required. To optimize the overall end-to-end efficiency, these internal power conversions should waste minimal energy and deliver more to the electronic modules. Capacitors are one of the main component families used in electronics, to store and deliver electric charges. Supercapacitors, so called because they provide over a million-fold increase in capacitance relative to a traditional capacitor of the same volume, are enabling a paradigm shift in the design of power electronic converter circuits. Here we show that supercapacitors could function as a lossless voltage-dropping element in the power conversion stages, thereby significantly increasing the power conversion stage efficiency. This approach has numerous secondary benefits: it improves continuity of the supply, suppresses voltage surges, allows the voltage regulation to be electromagnetically silent, and simplifies the design of voltage regulators. The use of supercapacitors allows the development of a novel loss-circumvention theory with applicability to a wide range of supercapacitor-assisted (SCA) techniques. These include low-dropout regulators, transient surge absorbers, LED lighting for DC microgrids, and rapid energy transfer for water heating.

Modeling Power GaN-HEMTs Using Standard MOSFET Equations and Parameters in SPICE

The device library in the standard circuit simulator (SPICE) lacks a gallium nitride based high-electron-mobility-transistor (GaN-HEMT) model, required for the design and verification of power-electronic circuits. This paper shows that GaN-HEMTs can be modeled by selected equations from the standard MOSFET LEVEL 3 model in SPICE. A method is proposed for the extraction of SPICE parameters in these equations. The selected equations and the proposed parameter-extraction method are verified with measured static and dynamic characteristics of commercial GaN-HEMTs. Furthermore, a double pulse test is performed in LTSpice and compared to its manufacturer model to demonstrate the effectiveness of the MOSFET LEVEL 3 model. The advantage of the proposed approach to use the MOSFET LEVEL 3 model, in comparison to the alternative behavioral-based model provided by some manufacturers, is that users can apply the proposed method to adjust the parameters of the MOSFET LEVEL 3 model for the case of manufacturers who do not provide SPICE models for their HEMTs.

Digital Pulse Width Modulation Control in Power Electronic Circuits Design

The paper mainly focuses on the digital pulse width modulation (DPWM) control techniques for high performance power electronic circuit design. The problem to be solved in this study addresses the DPWM converter design for DC to DC conversion process. The control techniques have been utilized the Fuzzy Logic Rules Base method for proposed SIMULINK model of high performance power electronic circuit. The analytical calculations for real circuit design have been completed based on the mathematical modeling of the system. The results from the developed SIMULINK model confirm the target specifications of the high performance condition for power electronic circuit which was met the objective of this study. The numerical results have been carried out with the help of MATLAB/SIMULINK.

Capacitive DC links in power electronic systems-reliability and circuit design

Capacitive DC links are an important part in voltage source power electronic converters, which contribute to cost, size and failure rate on a considerable scale. With more and more stringent constraints brought by industrial applications, the capacitive DC links encounter reliability aspect challenges. This paper presents a review on the reliability design and improvement of capacitive DC links from three aspects: 1) Quantitative reliability prediction for DC-link capacitors; 2) Reliability-oriented design of passive DC-link capacitor banks; and 3) Advanced active DC links to exceed the limits of passive DC-link capacitors. Key solutions for each aspect are highlighted and discussed with case studies. This review serves to provide a picture of state-of-the-art research on the reliability design and improvement of capacitive DC links, highlight the key milestones in this area, and identify the corresponding challenges and future research directions.

Power Electronics in 2025 and Beyond: A Focus on Power Electronics and Systems Technology

The future of power electronics in 2025 and beyond was the focus of session five of the Future of Electronic Power Processing and Conversion (FEPPCON) IX, which was held in June in Kruger Park, South Africa. This session was organized into five presentations, the first of which was given by Fred Lee, a U.S. National Academy of Engineering member and a distinguished professor at Virginia Tech. He described how to gain a better understanding of the modular multilevel converter (MMC) control to minimize the circulating current. This method has the potential to unleash the full power of MMCs. Prof. Zhengming Zhao of Tsinghua University, and the principal investigator of the Vitally Important Technology Development Program, sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, gave the second demonstration. He discussed the challenges facing megawatt power electronic circuit design and hardware development, especially in transient conditions. Afterward, the third lecture was given by Don Tan, distinguished engineer of Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. His talk presented two challenges that are facing power electronics communities for megawatt simulation and design. Dianguo Xu, vice president and professor of Harbin Institute of Technology's presentation was next and highlighted the potential challenges in connected motor drives and their impacts on the society at large. Finally, Ron Hui and C.K. Lee, both from Hong Kong University, gave the last presentation. Prof. Hui is a member of British Royal Society. They examined energy harvesting and wireless power transfer.

Optimizing Power Electronic Circuit Design with Uniform Search Range

Power electronic circuit (PEC) design is a complicated optimization problem that calls for evolutionary computation (EC) algorithm. The existing EC algorithms for optimizing PEC have difficulty in practical applications because they demand users to carefully define very narrow search ranges for different circuit components. Aiming at this problem, this paper models PEC with uniform search range (USR), where the components' search ranges are set uniformly according to the commonly used ranges in industrial applications. In order to solve the complex PEC problem with USR, an efficient orthogonal learning particle swarm optimization with predictive solution (OLPSO/PS) is proposed. Firstly, OLPSO/PS uses an orthogonal learning strategy to construct a more promising and efficient exemplar to guide particles to fly towards better searching areas dynamically. Secondly OLPSO/PS utilizes the predictive solution (PS) strategy to help save computational burden. OLPSO/PS is compared not only with the well-studied genetic algorithm and PSO for optimizing PEC in the literature, but also with OLPSO without PS and some other well-performed EC algorithms. Results show that OLPSO/PS is more promising in the optimization of PEC with USR, outperforming other algorithms in terms of higher fitness quality, faster optimization speed, stronger reliability, and better simulation results on both voltage and current. Moreover, the effectiveness of OLPSO/PS is further validated on the experiments in a practical circuit.

Non‐linear intermittent instabilities and their control in an interleaved DC/DC converter

The undesirable intermittent instabilities in periodically driven parallel power converter are caused due to periodic interferences in input voltage. This is a more common problem in power electronic circuit design and such operations are usually avoided by controlling the circuit parameters. In this study, the mechanism and conditions for the emergence of intermittent instabilities and remerging chaotic band attractors (or Feigenbaum sequences) in a master-slave controlled parallel buck converter are investigated. It is found that sinusoidal-type interference in input voltage at frequencies near the switching frequency or its rational multiples of this circuit results typically in period-bubbling, chaos and intermittency. It is also shown that an optimal, phase-shifted sinusoidal interference added to the reference voltage controls the period-bubbling behaviour and significantly extends the parameter range of desirable period-1 operation. The dynamics of this converter has been first investigated with suitable numerical simulations. The ordered and the chaotic dynamics of this system have been further mathematically described and analysed with a simple discrete map and experimental means. Experimental observations are found to be in good agreement with the analytical and simulation results.

CHAOTIC DYNAMICS OF VOLTAGE-MODE CONTROLLED BUCK CONVERTER WITH PERIODIC INTERFERENCE SIGNALS

The undesirable intermittency in periodically driven nonlinear systems such as switching power converters is a more common problem in power electronic circuit design. Such operations are usually avoided by modifying the circuit parameters which necessitates a proper understanding of the effects of various spurious signals. In the present work, the effect of different types of periodic interference signals like sinusoidal, triangular and saw-tooth waveforms have been considered and the influence of these signals in the input, control and reference voltages of the buck converter has been investigated. It is found that the presence of sinusoidal or triangular interference signal whose frequency is comparable with the switching frequency of the converter or its rational multiples manifests as symmetrical period-doubling bifurcation in intermittent periods. However, the presence of either sinusoidal or triangular interference signal having irrational frequency ratios with the switching frequency of the converter leads to quasi-periodic route to chaos. Also it is observed that the influence of saw-tooth interference signal results in intermittent chaos in the dynamics of the system. Further, the effect of simultaneous presence of more than one interference signal has been considered. The dynamics of this converter system has been mathematically described and analyzed with a simple discrete map. The ordered and the chaotic dynamics of this system have been investigated with suitable analytical, numerical and experimental means.

TDR Measurement Method for Voltage-Dependent Capacitance of Power Devices and Components

The measurement of circuit parasitic parameters and the evaluation of equivalent circuit models are both necessary techniques for noise analysis and the circuit design of high-speed power electronics circuits. Recently, time-domain reflectometry (TDR) has emerged as a technique for measuring circuit parameters. This paper proposes a TDR method for measuring the voltage- dependent capacitance of power devices and passive components. This method can be used to measure the capacitance on any dc bias voltage. The C <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">oss</sub> value of MOSFETs with V <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">DS</sub> = 0-350 V, the anode-cathode capacitance under reverse bias condition on SiC diodes, and voltage-dependent capacitances of ceramic capacitors were measured in experiments.

An Educational Laboratory for Digital Control and Rapid Prototyping of Power Electronic Circuits

This paper describes a new educational power electronics laboratory that was developed primarily to reinforce experimentally the fundamental concepts presented in a power electronics course. The developed laboratory combines theoretical design, simulation studies, digital control, fabrication, and verification of power-electronic circuits based on a set of hardware and software tools. The salient feature of the laboratory is that it takes the students through a step-by-step design, implementation, and digital control procedure for a set of power electronic circuits. A detailed description of the tools along with their use in the developed laboratory is presented.

DESIGN-ORIENTED BIFURCATION ANALYSIS OF POWER ELECTRONICS SYSTEMS

Bifurcation analysis has been applied to many power electronics circuits. Literature abounds with results regarding the various ways in which such circuits lose stability under variation of some selected parameters, e.g. via period-doubling bifurcation, Hopf bifurcation, border collision, etc. The current status of research in the identification of bifurcation behavior in power electronics has reached a stage where the salient types of bifurcation behavior, their underlying causes and the theoretical parameters affecting them have been well understood. Currently, the emphasis of research in this field has gradually shifted toward applications that are of direct relevance to practical design of power electronics. One direction is to apply some of the available research results in bifurcation behavior to the design of practical power electronics circuits. The main difficulty is that the abstract mathematical presentations of the available results are not directly applicable to practical design problems. In this paper we will discuss how research efforts may be directed to bridge this gap.

A Method for Measuring Voltage-Dependent Capacitance Using TDR System

The measurement of circuit parasitic parameters and evaluation of equivalent circuit models are necessary for a noise analysis or a high-speed operation circuit design of power electronics circuits. Recently, time domain reflectmetry (TDR) has emerged as a technique for measuring circuit parameters. This paper proposes a TDR method for measuring the voltage-dependent capacitance of a power MOSFET. This method can be used to measure the output capacitance Coss of a MOSFET for any DC bias voltage. The Coss of a MOSFET with VDS=350 V was measured in an experiment, while the datasheet gives values of Coss only for V DS values in the range 35-100 V.

An adaptive multi-modal optimization algorithm for simulation-based design of power-electronic circuits

This article introduces a non-gradient optimization algorithm for the simulation-based design of nonlinear power-electronic circuits where multiple local minima may exist. The algorithm steers a simultaneous search for multiple optima by generating a multi-resolution mesh in the search space. It adaptively increases its resolution only in regions where the presence of local optima is likely, thus offering significant savings in the number of (simulation-based) objective-function evaluations. The algorithm's relatively low computational intensity, its independence of local gradient information and its capability to discover multiple local minima simultaneously make it appealing for the optimization of expensive black-box functions. The article shows an implementation of the algorithm in MATLAB® and links it to the PSCAD®/EMTDC transient simulation program. Examples of the application of the proposed algorithm for both analytical and simulation-based objective functions are included.

Extended Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm for Power Electronic Circuit Design

Ant colony optimization (ACO) is typically used to search paths through graphs. The concept is based on simulating the behavior of ants in finding paths from the colony to food. Its searching mechanism is applicable for optimizing electric circuits with components, like resistors and capacitors, available in discrete values. However, power electronic circuits (PECs) generally consist of components, like inductors, manufactured in continuous values. Therefore, the traditional ACO algorithm cannot be applied directly. In this paper, an extended ACO (eACO) that can search the optimal values of components manufactured in discrete and continuous values is presented. The idea is based on using the orthogonal design method (ODM) to dynamically update the database of the components available with continuous values, so that these components will have <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">pseudo</i> -discrete values in the search space. To speed up the optimization process, the ODM performs local search of the best combination around the best ant. The eACO also takes the component tolerances into account in evaluating the fitness value of each ant. The proposed algorithm has been successfully used to optimize the design of a buck regulator. The predicted results have been compared with the published results available in the literature and verified with experimental measurements.

Virtual Power Electronics: Novel Software Tools for Design, Modeling and Education

The current paper is dedicated to present browser-based multimedia-rich software tools and e-learning curriculum to support the design and modeling process of power electronics circuits and to explain sometimes rather sophisticated phenomena. Two projects will be discussed. The so-called Inetele project is financed by the Leonardo da Vinci program of the European Union (EU). It is a collaborative project between numerous EU universities and institutes to develop state-of-the art curriculum in Electrical Engineering. Another cooperative project with participation of Japanese, European and Australian institutes focuses especially on developing e-learning curriculum, interactive design and modeling tools, furthermore on development of a virtual laboratory. Snapshots from these two projects will be presented.

The Use of Condition Maps in the Design and Testing of Power Electronic Circuits and Devices

This paper presents a new technique for analyzing the conditions to which power semiconductor devices are subjected within practical inverters. A representative load cycle, which defines the inverter conditions, is used to estimate the switching conditions of the devices. Condition maps are generated, which allows the design and testing of the system to consider the more likely range of conditions. Estimates of temperature profiles can also be made to further improve the realism of such design. This promises to lead to the development of more realistic optimization procedures.