Single-phase improved auxiliary resonant snubber inverter that reduces the auxiliary current and THD

Abstract

An LC filter is required to reduce the output current ripple in the auxiliary resonant snubber inverter (ARSI) for high-performance applications. However, if the traditional control method is used in the ARSI with LC filter, then unnecessary current flows in the auxiliary circuit. In addressing this problem, a novel load-adaptive control that fully uses the filter inductor current ripple to realize the soft-switching of the main switches is proposed. Compared with the traditional control implemented in the ARSI with LC filter, the proposed control can reduce the required auxiliary current, contributing to higher efficiency and DC-link voltage utilization. In this study, the detailed circuit operation in the light load mode (LLM) and the heavy load mode (HLM) considering the inductor current ripple is described. The characteristics of the improved ARSI are expressed mathematically. A prototype with 200 kHz switching frequency, 80 V DC voltage, and 8 A maximum output current was developed to verify the effectiveness of the improved ARSI. The proposed ARSI was found to successfully operate in the LLM and HLM, achieving zero-voltage switching (ZVS) of the main switches and zero-current switching (ZCS) of the auxiliary switches from zero load to full load. The DC-link voltage utilization of the proposed control is 0.758, which is 0.022 higher than that of the traditional control. The peak efficiency is 91.75% at 8 A output current for the proposed control, higher than 89.73% for the traditional control. Meanwhile, the carrier harmonics is reduced from -44 dB to -66 dB through the addition of the LC filter.