Sustained Slow-Scale Oscillation in Higher Order Current-Mode Controlled Converter

DC-DC converters under current-mode control have been known to exhibit slow-scale oscillation as a result of a Hopf-type bifurcation as one or more of the parameters of the outer voltage loop are varied. In the absence of the outer voltage loop (i.e., open loop), slow-scale oscillation was generally not observed in simple low-order dc-dc converters, i.e., buck, buck-boost, and boost converters. In this paper, slow-scale bifurcation in a higher order current-mode controlled converter is studied. It has been found experimentally that, even in the absence of a closed outer voltage loop, a current-mode controlled Cuk converter can exhibit a slow-scale Hopf-type bifurcation. The phenomenon was observed in a commercial low-ripple dc-dc converter which has been designed using the Cuk converter and the LM2611 controller. Such slow-scale oscillation of the inner current loop can also be observed in full-circuit SPICE simulations. An averaged model has been developed and implemented in SPICE to find the Hopf bifurcation boundaries. With this averaged model, the Hopf bifurcation can be explained conveniently using the traditional loop gain analysis. Specifically, the extra degrees of freedom in higher order dc-dc converters have opened up a new possible mode of instability which has not been found in simple low-order dc-dc converters.