• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.356-363
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• 2018

The combination of a buck converter and a forward converter can be considered to accomplish a high step-down non-isolated converter. To decrease the insufficient step-down ratio of a regular buck converter and to distribute switch voltage stress, a forward-integrated buck (FIB) converter is proposed in this paper. The proposed interleaved DC-DC converter provides an additional step-down gain with the help of a forward converter. In addition to its simple structure, the transformer flux reset problem is solved and an additional magnetic core reset winding is not required. The operational principle and an analysis of the proposed FIB converter are presented and verified by experimental results obtained with a 240 W, 150 V/24 V prototype.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.157-163
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• 2014

This paper proposes a two-stage step-down buck and a tapped-inductor boost cascaded converter for high efficiency photovoltaic micro-inverter applications. The proposed inverter is a new structure to inject a rectified sinusoidal current into a low-frequency switching inverter for single-phase grid with unity power factor. To build a rectified-waveform of the output current. the converter employs both of a high efficiency step-up and a step-down converter in cascade. In step-down mode, tapped inductor(TI) boost converter stops and the buck converter operates alone. In boost mode, the TI converter operates with the halt of buck operation. The converter provides a rectified current to low frequency inverter, then the inverter converts the current into a unity power-factor sinusoidal waveform. By applying a TI, the converter can decrease the turn-on ratios of the main switch in TI boost converter even with an extreme step-up operation. The performance validation of the proposed design is confirmed by an experimental results of a 120W hardware prototype.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.203-216
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• 2014

In the conventional dc-dc converter, a pair of additional diode and the adjacent passive component capacitor/inductor can be added to the circuit with an X-shape connection, which generates a family of new topologies. The novel circuits, also called diode-assisted dc-dc converter, enhance the voltage boost/buck capability and have a great potential for high step-up/step-down power conversions. This paper mainly investigates and compares conventional dc-dc converter and diode-assisted dc-dc converter in wide range power conversion from the aspects of silicon devices, passive components requirements, electro-magnetic interference (EMI) and efficiency. Then, a comprehensive comparison example of a high step-up power conversion system was carried out. The two kinds of boost dc-dc converters operate under the same operation conditions. Mathematical analysis and experiment results verify that diode-assisted dc-dc converters are very promising for simultaneous high efficiency and high step-up/step-down power conversion in distributed power supply systems.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.70-76
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• 2013

For high power high step-down dc-dc conversion applications, conventional three-level dc-dc converters are subject to extreme duty cycles or increased volume and cost due to the use of transformers. In this paper, a transformerless three-level dc-dc buck converter with a high step-down conversion ratio is proposed. The converter comprises two asymmetrical half bridges, which are of the neutral point clamped structures. Therefore, the output pulse voltage of the converter can be obtained in terms of the voltage difference between the two half bridges. In order to realize harmonious switching of the converter, a modulation strategy with capacitor voltages self balance is presented. According to the deduced output dc voltage function, transformerless operation without extreme duty cycles can be implemented. Experimental results from a 1kW prototype verify the validity of the proposed converter. It is suitable for ship electric power distribution systems.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.345-352
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• 2017

In this paper, a non-dissipative snubber for reducing the switching losses in the step down converter is proposed. The conventional step down converter, e.g., buck converter, suffers from serious switching losses and consequentially heat generation because of its hard switching. Thus, it is unsuitable for high switching frequency operation. Reduction of the reactive components' size, such as an output inductor and capacitor, is difficult. The proposed snubber can slow down the increasing current slopes and switch voltage at turn-on and turn-off transients, thereby significantly reducing the switching loses. Additionally, the slowly increasing current during switch turn-on transition, can effectively solve the output rectifier diode reverse recovery problem. Therefore, the proposed non-dissipative snubber not only leads to the efficiency of converter operation at high switching frequency but also reduces the reactive components size in proportion to the switching frequency. To confirm the validity of the proposed circuit, theoretical analysis and experimental results from a 150 W, 1 MHz prototype are presented.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.263-266
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• 2003

The high power factor converters are classified step-up, step-up-down and step-down converter, The power conversion system must be increased switching frequency in order to achieve a small size, a light weight and a low noise. And the power system brings on a high efficiency and high power factor. When a switch of the step down converter is operated with a commercial frequency(60Hz), a reactor using the converter is gone with a great number of harmonics waveforms of low grade. As results of this, the converter is decreased input power factor and is increased system size. To improved these, this paper proposes a PSM(Pulse Size Modulation) control strategy operated with high power factor.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.555-558
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• 2009

This paper presents a step-down converter IC for automotive applications. This device was designed for a 40 V/1 A high-power output for voltage reference of automotive IC. It provides 250kHz PWM (pulse width modulation) and PFM(pulse frequency modulation) according to load conditions. This device was simulated spectre of IC-design-tools and fabricated Dong-bu Hitec 0.35um BD350BA process.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.1445-1453
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• 2017

In this study, a new zero-voltage transition (ZVT) buck converter with coupled inductor using a synchronous rectifier and a lossless clamp circuit is proposed. The regular buck converter with tapped inductor has extended duty cycle for high step-down applications. However, the leakage inductance of the coupled inductor produced considerable voltage spikes across the switch. A lossless clamp circuit is used in the proposed converter to overcome this problem. The freewheeling diode was replaced with a synchronous rectifier to reduce conduction losses in the proposed converter. ZVT conditions at turn-on and turn-off instants were provided for the main switch. The synchronous rectifier switch turned on under zero-voltage switching, and the auxiliary switch turn-on and turn-off were under zero-current condition. Experimental results of a 100 W-100 kHz prototype are provided to justify the validity of the theoretical analysis. Moreover, the conducted electromagnetic interference of the proposed converter is measured and compared with its hard-switching counterpart.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Marine Engineers Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.304-309
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• 2005

This paper presents an electronic ballast using a step down converter, a low frequency inverter for high intensity short-arc discharge lamp. The proposed ballast is composed of a full-wave rectifier, a step down converter operated as a current source with power regulation and a low frequency inverter with external ignition circuit. The ignition circuit generates high voltage pulse of $3{\sim}5[kV]$ peak, 130[Hz] periodically. Moreover, it is able to reignite at regular intervals by protective circuit. As experimental results on the test, acoustic resonance phenomenon is eliminated by operating the low frequency square wave voltage and current. Lamp voltage, current and consumption power are measured 123.8[V], 8.1[A] and 1,002[W], respectively. It was confirmed that the designed ballast operate the lamp with a constant power.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.1629-1638
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• 2016

Differential power processing (DPP) systems are among the most effective architectures for photovoltaic (PV) power systems because they are highly efficient as a result of their distributed local maximum power point tracking ability, which allows the fractional processing of the total generated power. However, DPP systems require a high-efficiency, high step-up/down bidirectional converter with broad operating ranges and galvanic isolation. This study proposes a single, magnetic, high-efficiency, high step-up/down bidirectional DC-DC converter. The proposed converter is composed of a bidirectional flyback and a bidirectional isolated switched-capacitor cell, which are competitively cheap. The output terminals of the flyback converter and switched-capacitor cell are connected in series to obtain the voltage step-up. In the reverse power flow, the converter reciprocally operates with high efficiency across a broad operating range because it uses hard switching instead of soft switching. The proposed topology achieves a genuine on-off interleaved energy transfer at the transformer core and windings, thus providing an excellent utilization ratio. The dynamic characteristics of the converter are analyzed for the controller design. Finally, a 240 W hardware prototype is constructed to demonstrate the operation of the bidirectional converter under a current feedback control loop. To improve the efficiency of a PV system, the maximum power point tracking method is applied to the proposed converter.