Investigations on the Use of the Power Transistor Source Inductance to Mitigate the Electromagnetic Emission of Switching Power Circuits

Abstract

With power designers always demanding for faster power switches, electromagnetic interference has become an issue of primary concern. As known, the commutation of power transistors is the main cause of the electromagnetic noise, which can be worsened by the presence of unwanted oscillations superimposed onto the switching waveforms. This work proposes a solution to mitigate the oscillations caused by the turn-on of a power transistor by exploiting its source inductance plus an external one. In this context, an optimization method is proposed to find the optimal value of the source inductance as a trade-off between oscillation damping and power dissipation. The experimental results performed on a prototyped power converter assess the proposed technique as the spectrum of the conducted emission is attenuated by 20 dB at the oscillation frequency. With respect to traditional solution based on snubbers, the proposed solution results in a similar oscillation damping, but with a 0.5% higher power efficiency.