Conducted EMI noise mitigation in DC-DC converters using active filtering method

Electromagnetic interference (EMI) noise mitigation is an important issue that should be addressed and emphasized when designing DC/DC converters. These later, are known to be the primary culprit of the EMI noise generation in most of the electronic systems, mainly due to the switching action of the MOSFET circuitries. Passive input EMI LC filters have been the intuitive solution for EMI noise mitigation; hence they have been integrated in almost every DC/DC converters. However, their size, weight and cost can cause a significant constraint in some applications. To overcome these constraints, an input active EMI filter is proposed. The active filter is based on the noise current phase shift and the injection of this noise current back to the DC input bus. However, the combination of the input active and the passive filters shows a substantial attenuation of the conducted emissions as compared to the passive filter only, which in turn contributes to the reduction of the size and weight of the input passive EMI filter. The proposed combination provides a design solution for compliance engineers where the PCB real-estate is an issue. Experimental results to demonstrate the performance and the effectiveness of the input active EMI filter in DC/DC converters are presented.