Development of switching peak current reduction method in switched-capacitor dc-dc converters to n-level converters

The dc-dc converters are used in wide variety of industrial applications. Common traditional dc-dc converters require at least one inductive component which makes them bulky, costly, and with low efficiency. Switched-capacitor (SC) dc-dc converters are a solution that can overcome these problems. However, these converters have high pulse currents when switching transients occur, which will reduce the efficiency and cause electromagnetic interference (EMI) problems and make them difficult to be applied in high-power conversion applications. Although, a new design method for peak current reduction has been introduced for these converters, but this design method is limited to four level converters. So, in this paper, the presented design method in [1] is developed for n-level SC dc-dc converter and the operation principles, all mathematical relationships between the number of components (switches and capacitors) and generated output voltage levels and peak currents have been theoretically analyzed. Also, simulation results based on PSCAD software are presented to verify the theoretical analysis.