Optimal Design of a Two-Winding Inductor Bouncer Circuit

In many pulsed-power applications, the flatness of the output pulse is an important characteristic to enable proper system operation, whereas a pulse flatness within less than a few percent has to be achieved. In power modulators based on capacitor discharge, this voltage droop is mainly defined by the input capacitance. In order to overcome this problem, in power modulator systems, compensation circuits are added, whereby in spite of a smaller storage capacitor, a flat pulse top is achieved. Depending on the pulse duration, different approaches for voltage droop compensation exist. For short pulse durations, in the range of several microseconds, only passive solutions or bouncer circuits are applicable. In this paper, the design and optimization of a two-winding inductor bouncer circuit are presented in order to achieve an output voltage droop of less than 1%. Due to the realized galvanic isolation, a new degree of freedom is obtained, which allows an adaptation of the bouncer circuit´s voltage and current ratings to standard semiconductor switches. With an optimal design of the two-winding inductor bouncer circuit for the existing system, the volume of the input capacitor is reduced by a factor of 10.5, and the stored energy is decreased by a factor of 24 compared to a system without a bouncer circuit.