Asymmetry Between Main Channels of a Multilevel Buck Converter - Operation in Steady State

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to examine a special case of asymmetrical operation of a four level, five channel resonant Buck converter in discontinuous current conduction mode ($DCM$) among steady state conditions. Having two input ($p$ and $n$) and four output ($p1,p2, n1, n2$) channels, the converter can operate in symmetrical mode when the input and output voltages are both symmetrical. Asymmetry can be caused by the unevenness of any parameters inside the channels or among them. This paper focuses on the output asymmetry appearing between main channels $p$ and $n$, the case of asymmetrical output voltages, loads, and powers are examined. Steady state analysis and control strategy is proposed that are supported by both simulation and experimental results. The proposed control strategy can be used when applying the converter in feeding multilevel inverters.