Resonant Converter with Soft Switching and Wide Voltage Operation

A new DC/DC resonant converter with wide output voltage range operation is presented and studied to have the benefits of low switching losses on active devices and low voltage stresses on power diodes. To overcome serious reverse recovery losses of power diodes on a conventional full-bridge pulse-width modulation converter, the resonant converter is adopted to reduce the switching loss and increase the circuit efficiency. To extend the output voltage range in conventional half-bridge or full-bridge resonant converters, the secondary sides of two diode rectifiers are connected in series to have wide output voltage operation. The proposed converter can be either operated at one-resonant-converter mode for low voltage range or two-resonant-converter mode for high voltage range. Thus, the voltage rating of power diodes is decreased. Experiments with the design example are given to show the circuit performance and validate the theoretical discussion and analysis.