Studies of routes to chaos for current-programmed DC/DC converters

This paper reports two distinct types of bifurcation paths exhibited by current-programmed DC/DC power converters, which are distinguished by the ability or inability to undergo repeated period-doublings. In particular, this paper focuses on the open-loop power converters, i.e., ones that do not contain an output feedback loop. It is shown that for the case of the boost power converter, the two different types of bifurcation paths can be viewed as part of another bifurcation in which a quasi-periodic sequence transmutes into a period-doubling sequence. For the buck power converter, however, period-doubling routes to chaos are found to be impossible, and in this case, the bifurcation patterns essentially comprise quasi-periodic regions with windows of periodicity. With the range of one bifurcation parameter fixed, the bifurcation diagrams contain more scaled-down replicas, as another bifurcation parameter increases, which are arranged in a manner similar to the period-doubling cascade