Minimization of Output Voltage Ripple of Two-Phase Interleaved Buck Converter with Active Clamp

Abstract

A control technique combining pulse width modulation (PWM) and pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) is presented herein to reduce the output voltage ripple of the converter as little as possible. Such a converter requires a two-stage cascaded structure. The first stage is the buck-boost converter, which is used to adjust the output voltage of the second power stage, whereas the second stage is the two-phase interleaved buck converter, which is used to reduce the output voltage ripple. In theory, the two phases of the second stage operate under the condition of individual duty cycles of 50% with a phase difference of 180° between the two, and hence, the currents in the two phases are cancelled for any period of time, thereby making the output voltage of the converter almost voltage-free. Moreover, in order to improve the overall efficiency further, the proposed soft-switching technique based on an active clamp is presented and applied to these two stages to render the main and auxiliary switches turned on with zero-voltage switching (ZVS). Finally, the operating principles and control strategies of the proposed converter are described, and then, their effectiveness is verified by experimental results.