Digital regulation of a phase controlled power converter

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, now in construction at Brookhaven National Laboratory, will use phase controlled power converters for the main dipole and quadrupole magnet strings. The rectifiers in these power supplies will be controlled by a digital regulator based on the TI 320C30 Digital Signal Processor (DSP). The DSP implements the current loop, the voltage loop, and a system to actively reduce the sub-harmonic ripple components. Digital firing circuits consisting of a phase-locked loop and counters are used to fire the SCRs. Corrections for the subharmonic reduction are calculated by the DSP and stored in registers in the firing circuit. These corrections are added, in hardware, to the over-all firing count provided by the DSP. The resultant count is compared to a reference counter to fire the SCRs. This combination of a digital control system and the digital firing circuits allows the correction of the sub-harmonics in a real-time sense. A prototype of the regulator has been constructed, and the preliminary testing indicates a sub-harmonic reduction of 60 dB