Application of common-source active-clamp circuit to various DC-DC converter topologies

An active-clamp circuit is an effective method to suppress the switching surge and to realize the soft switching in switching DC-DC converters. Recently, the common-source type active-clamp forward converter was presented to enable easy gate drive with a direct connection of the sources of the two n-channel MOSFET switches. In this paper, we apply the common-source type active-clamp circuit to various kinds of DC-DC converter topologies. The effectiveness of the common-mode noise reduction is experimentally confirmed and its mechanism is explained using an equivalent circuit.