• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.35 no.7
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• pp.881-890
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• 2011

Analyses of performance and behavior of the individual PEM fuel cells (PEMFC) under different operating conditions are of importance optimally to design and efficiently to operate the stack. The paper focuses on experimental analyses of a two-cell stack under different operating conditions, which performance and behavior are measured by the voltage of a cell as well as the stack. Experimental parameters include stoichiometric ratio, temperature of the air supplied under different working stack temperatures and loads. Results showed that the cell voltages are dominantly influenced by the temperature of the air supplied among others. In addition, an inherent difference between the first and the second cell voltage exists because of the tolerances of the cell components and the resulting different over-potentials at different equilibrium states. Furthermore, it is shown that the proton conductivity in the membranes conditioned by the humidity in the cathode channel highly affects the voltage differences of the two cells.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.321-329
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• 2015

The static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) of cascaded H-bridge configuration accompanying multiple separate DC sides is inherently subject to the problem of uneven DC voltages. These DC voltages in one leg can be controlled by adjusting the AC-side output voltage of each cell inverter, which is proportional to the active power. However, when the phase current is extremely small, large AC-side voltage is required to generate the active power to balance the cell voltages. In this study, an alternative zero-sequence current injection method is proposed, which facilitates effective cell balancing controllers at no load, and has no effect on the power grid because the injected zero sequence current only flows within the STATCOM delta circuit. The performance of the proposed method is verified through simulation and experiments.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.1 no.1 s.1
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• pp.11-18
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• 1997

By utilizing the technique to monitor the DC cell node voltages through circuit simulation, degradation of the static read operating margin In high load-resistor SRAM cell was examined, which is caused by parasitic resistances and transistor asymmetries in this cell structure. By selectively adding the parasitic resistances to an ideal cell, the influence of each parasitic resistance on the operating margin was examined, and then the cases with parasitic resistances in pairs were also examined. By selectively changing the channel width of cell transistors to generate cell asymmetry, the influence of cell asymmetry on the operating margin was also examined. Analyses on the operating margins were performed by comparing the supply voltage values at which two cell node voltages merge to a single value and the differences of cell node voltages at VDD=5V in the simulated node voltage characteristics. By determining the parasitic resistances and the transistor asymmetries which give the most serious effect on the static read-operation of SRAM cell from this analysis based on circuit simulated, a criteria was provided, which can be referred in the design of new SRAM cell structures.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2009.07a
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• pp.1031_1032
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• 2009

The voltages of unit cells of a fuel cell stack are one of the most significant factors to detect failure conditions and thereof safely control and operate the fuel cell system. In this paper, we describe two methods to monitor the voltages of the unit cells of a stack in consideration of data accuracy, circuit extensibility to various numbers of cells, and cost. The reported methods are approached by (i) the power isolation of cell voltage monitoring part from the communications part and (ii) the utilization of a commercially available cell monitoring integrated circuit IC of a Li-ion battery.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.110-116
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• 2004

We propose a novel sensing scheme, which operates by sensing the difference in voltage between a memory cell and a reference cell for a magneto-resistive random access memory (MRAM). A new midpoint-reference generation circuit is adopted for the reference cell to improve the sensing margin and to guarantee correct operation of sensing circuit for wide range of tunnel magneto resistance (TMR) voltages. In this scheme, the output voltage of the reference cell becomes nearly the midpoint between the cell voltages of high and low states even if the voltage across the magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) varies.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.240-249
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• 2018

Individual DC voltage balance problem is an inherent issue for cascaded H-bridge (CHB) based converter. When the CHB-based static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) is operating at zero current mode, the software-based individual DC voltage balancing control techniques may not work because of the infinitesimal output current. However, the different power losses of each cell would lead to the individual DC voltages unbalance. The uneven power losses on the local supplied cell-controllers (including the control circuit and drive circuit) would especially cause the divergence of individual DC voltages, due to their characteristic as constant power loads. To solve this problem, this paper proposes an adaptive voltage balancing module which is designed in the cell-controller board with small size and low cost circuits. It is controlled to make the power loss of the cell a constant resistance load, thus the DC voltages are balanced in zero current mode. Field test in a 10kV STATCOM confirms the performance of the proposed method.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.176-183
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• 2017

There is a problem of long erase and program times in testing large-density memories. Also, there is a need of testing the VT voltages of EEPROM cells at each step during the reliability test. In this paper, a cell verification module is designed for a 512kb EEPROM and a CG (control gate) driver is proposed for measuring the VT voltages of a split gate EEPROM having negative erase VT voltages. In the proposed cell verification module, asymmetric isolated HV (high-voltage) NMOS devices are used to apply negative voltages of -3V to 0V in measuring erase VT voltages. Since erasing and programming can be done in units of even pages, odd pages, or a chip in the test time reduction mode, test time can be reduced to 2ms in testing the chip from 4ms in testing the even and the odd pages.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.36 no.12
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• pp.903-907
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• 1987

A laser potential transformer(PT) has been developed and characterized to measure the voltages using electro-optic Kerr effect. Laser PT utilizing Kerr cell successfully measures applied voltages up to 3 KV. Experimental results show a good agreement with the theoretical values. Ierr constant of nitrobenzene is also measured and agrees very well with the published results. Applied voltages and modulated laser intensities are also characterized. (Jun 1) WE1

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.512-521
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• 2016

Cascaded H-bridge multilevel (CHBML) inverters usually include a large number of isolated dc-voltage sources. Some faults in the dc-voltage sources result in unequal cell dc voltages. Unfortunately, the conventional phase-shifted carrier (PSC) PWM method that is widely used for CHBML inverters cannot eliminate low frequency sideband harmonics when the cell dc voltages are not equal. This paper analyzes the principle of sideband harmonic elimination, and proposes an improved PSCPWM that can eliminate low frequency sideband harmonics under the condition of unequal dc voltages. In order to calculate the carrier phases, it is necessary to solve transcendental equations for low frequency sideband harmonic elimination. Therefore, an approach based on the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is presented in this paper. The proposed PSCPWM method enhances the reliability of CHBML inverters. The proposed PSCPWM is not limited to CHBML inverters. It can also be applied to other types of multilevel inverters. Simulation and experimental result obtained from a prototype CHBML inverter verify the theoretical analysis and the achievements made in this paper.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.367-376
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• 2016

This paper presents a cell balancing method for a single switch flyback converter with a multi-winding transformer. The conventional method using a flyback converter with a multi-winding transformer is simple and easy to control, but the voltage of each secondary winding coil might be non-uniform because of the unequal effective turn-ratio. In particular, it is difficult to control the non-uniform effect using turn-ratios because secondary coil has a limited number of turns. The non-uniform secondary voltages disturb the cell balancing procedure and induce an unbalance in cell voltages. Individual cell control by adding a switch for each cell can reduce the undesirable effect. However, the circuit becomes bulky, resulting in additional loss. The proposed method here uses the conventional flyback converter with an adjustment made to the output filters of the cells, instead of the additional switch. The magnitude of voltage applied to a particular cell can be reduced or increased according to the adjusted filter and the selected switching frequency. An analysis of the conventional converter configuration and the filter design method reveals the possibility of adequate cell balancing control without any additional switch on the secondary side.