Alternative topologies for the low-voltage buck converter

In this thesis, investigative work on and development of alternative topologies for the buck converter for low voltage dc dc conversion was performed. The three level buck, Resonant Switch Capacitor (ResSC), and Cuk-Buck2 were selected to be studied further based on the fact that they contain few components and were discovered in this work to have the possibility of operating at fixed frequency while smoothly regulating output voltage over the entire conversion ratio of 0 to 1. All three use a capacitive storage element in addition to a small inductance/s, so it was believed this may allow for efficiency or density improvements due to the excellent energy storage capability of MLCCs. New control methods were developed in order to operate the ResSC and Cuk-Buck2 at fixed frequency over the entire output range. New work was done to in order to achieve flying capacitor balancing in the ResSC and Cuk-Buck2, practical for future implementation in a monolithic converter. Simulated efficiency and other characteristics of the three converters are compared. Prototypes were built and used to confirm functionality of the new control schemes and balancing methods..

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Whitney, Jonas Alan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Serhii Zhak and David J. Perreault.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/119559

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/119559