High efficiency quadratic boost converter

This paper presents a new soft-switched pulse-width modulated (PWM) quadratic boost converter which is suitable for applications with a wide fluctuating DC input voltage range, e.g. photovoltaic and fuel cells systems. The active switches are turned-on under zero-current and zero-voltage switching (ZC-ZVS) and turned-off with zero-voltage switching (ZVS). The diodes commutate softly and the reverse-recovery problems are greatly alleviated. Besides operating at constant frequency and with reduced commutation losses, the voltage and current stresses of the components in the proposed converter are similar to those in its conventional “hard-switched” counterpart. As a result, there are no additional conduction losses in the semiconductor devices. Principle of operation and experimental results of the proposed ZC-ZVS quadratic boost converter is provided to verify the performance of the proposed soft-switched quadratic boost converter.