Proposal of switching power amplifier using small capacity linear amplifier and LC filter

Abstract

The higher efficiency and the low noise in output voltage and current has been required in some applications, i.e. audio-video equipment, medical equipment and so on. This paper proposes a power amplifier in which a PWM inverter is used as a main circuit. In the proposed power amplifier, a hybrid filter composed of a simple and general LC filter and a small capacity linear amplifier is connected to the output of the inverter. The linear amplifier is inserted in series to the filter capacitor to improve the filtering effect of the LC filter. Switching ripples and LC resonances are considerably suppressed by controlling the amplifier using the proposed method and a low distortion switching power amplifier is realized. The effects of the proposal circuit are verified by simulations and experiments. As a result, the proposed circuit achieves low noise about THD = 0.68% in simulation and THD = 1.7% in experiment.