Cooperative converters in power electronic systems

The specifications of power electronic systems are becoming ever more exigent - better performance (dynamic and steady state), increased efficiency, reliability, and quality, and decreased power rating, size (volume and weight), and cost. One strategy for the overall improvement of these systems is to use various cooperating converters with the system functions being shared among them, optimizing each converter for the functions assigned it. The result will be a converter with better characteristics than a conventional design based on a single converter (or on a simple parallel association of converters) responsible for all the functions assigned to the system. This paper analyzes the possibilities of such cooperative converters, considering the filtering inductor size, and the efficiency, reliability, and power rating.