Advanced Methods for Steady-State Analysis and Design of Switching Power Converter Systems

Current development trends in the area of switching power converters such as rising integration, increasing power density, and the growing complexity of power converter systems have indicated a strong need for a new class of simulation tools which would allow for a com¬plex approach to solve the problems of converter analysis and design. Such an approach, besides a fast and accurate simulation of the converter switching waveforms, should also include an overall analysis of converter behavior in response to changes in operating conditions, a search for extreme values of internal variables of the converter circuit, computation of power dissipated on par¬ticular devices, calculation of efficiency, ac analysis, sensitivity analysis, and design optimization. The role of determining the steady-state with the resulting algorithms is crucial. Research in the area of numerical analysis of switching power converter circuits has been traditionally focused on the operation of a single power converter. However, growing demand for integrated high-power-density solutions requires this analysis to expand beyond the domain of one converter and capture the interaction of all power converters in the network. In order to better address the needs of development and practical design, this thesis presents alternative simulation techniques which can be used for the analy¬sis of networks consisting of multiple switching converters. The focus of this work is the area of steady-state analysis. Two new methods for the efficient determination of switching power converter steady-state are presented. These new methods simplify the algorithm structure by reducing the number of iteration loops and effectively address the convergence issues seen with published methods. Furthermore, the proposed algorithms are extended to cover the area of networks with multiple switching converters. Particular focus is on the development of general methods for the modeling and simulation of networks with multiple switching power converters in both the time-domain and frequency-domain.