Integration of electromagnetic passive components in DPS front-end DC/DC converter - a comparative study of different integration steps

In most of the power electronics converters, the overall footprint and profile of the whole system are in large part determined by the footprint and profile of the passive components and the interconnections between them. Integrated magnetics, planar magnetics and passive integration techniques have been topics of research for the past few years to reduce the parts count, footprint and profile of the passive components, hence increasing the power density of the whole converter. This becomes especially prominent in the distributed power system (DPS) front-end converters, as the trend is moving from 2U (1U=1.75 inches) standard toward 1U standard. This paper presents a comparative study of the integration steps of passive components of an asymmetrical half bridge circuit (AHBC) for DPS front-end DC/DC converter application. Four AHBC converters using discrete passive components, nonplanar integrated magnetic components, planar integrated magnetic components and passive integrated power electronic module (IPEM), respectively, are constructed and tested. Comparisons are made from the viewpoints of volume, profile, efficiency, EMI and thermal performances of the four converters. The experimental result shows that the passive IPEM, which integrates all the passive components, has much higher power density, lowest profile, lower temperature rise and similar efficiency.