IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 18,NO. 4,JULY 2003 985
Cyclic-Averaging for High-Speed
Analysis of Resonant Converters
Martin P. Foster, H. Isaac Sewell, Chris M. Bingham, Member, IEEE, David A. Stone, Dirk Hente, and Dave Howe
Abstract—The paper describes the development and appli-
cation of a cyclic-averaging technique for the rapid analysis of
high-order resonant power converters. To provide a focus to the
paper, particular emphasis is given to a 3rd-order LCC voltage
output converter topology. The proposed methodology predicts
steady-state voltages and currents throughout the circuit, and
provides estimates of the stresses on the resonant circuit compo-
nents. State-space simulations and experimental results from a
350 V-input/150 V-output converter are used to demonstrate a pre-
diction accuracy comparable with time-domain integration-based
techniques is achievable, while requiring only 1/10,000th of the
computation time. In addition, a comparison with Spice simula-
tion results shows that cyclic averaging provides commensurate
predictions of voltage and current stresses on the resonant circuit
components. Issues arising from the stray capacitance associated
with the resonant inductor, and the corresponding sensitivity of
the predicted output voltage, are also considered.
Index Terms—Modelling, resonant power conversion, simula-
tion.
I. INTRODUCTION
R
ESONANT power converters offer a higher efficiency and
reduced size compared with traditional switched-mode
counterparts. Thus, there is significant interest in high-order
resonant systems, such as that shown in Fig. 1, particularly
in the consumer product industry, to satisfy the requirement
for smaller power supplies for compact electronic equipment.
However, the increased circuit complexity makes it more
difficult to accurately predict the performance of the converters
during an iterative design process, due to the protracted
simulation times required for component-based simulation
packages, such as Spice. Computationally efficient algorithms
are, therefore, sought to accurately predict current and voltage
waveforms throughout such converters, so as to facilitate their
design.
Utilizing state-variable models, and exploiting the periodic
behavior of resonant converters in the steady-state, cyclic-aver-
aging techniques will be shown to provide an attractive alter-
native to traditional ‘integration-based’ and harmonic analysis
methods for converter performance evaluation, and component
stress prediction.
Manuscript received February 8, 2002; revised March 3, 2003. Recom-
mended by Associate Editor K. Smedley.
M. P. Foster, H. I. Sewell, C. M. Bringham, D. A. Stone, and D. Howe are
with the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of
Sheffield, Sheffield, S1 3JD U.K. (e-mail: c.bingham@sheffield.ac.uk).
D. Hente is with the Forschlungslaboratorien, Philips GmbH, Aachen,
Germany.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2003.813763
II. MODELLING CYCLIC BEHAVIOUR
The proposed approach is considered to be a variant of
Floquet-based techniques, [1], whereby averaged, steady-state
values of state-variables are determined. Due to the multiple
operating modes of resonant converters, Fig. 2, “classical”
steady-state operating points cannot be determined due to the
continuous switching nature of the input voltage. However, by
considering converter operation to be periodic, then
(1)
where the state vector, , describing converter operation at time
is equal to the state vector at time , being the pe-
riod of the applied input voltage and an integer. The resulting
performance of the converter can then be obtained from ana-
lytical equations without the need for integration. The method
can, thereby, provide steady-state performance predictions ex-
tremely rapidly.
In the steady-state, each period of a cycle can be decom-
posed into multiple operating modes, each dependent on the
state of the input voltage and the rectifier input/output volt-
ages and currents. Fig. 2 shows typical steady-state voltage and
current waveforms for the resonant converter circuit shown in
Fig. 1, together with the sub-division of the cycle into operating
modes, .
In general, power converters operating in a cyclic-mode
can be modeled by a system of piecewise linear (state-space)
equations which describe the converter in each operating mode
during the cycle; i.e.
(2)
where is the state vector, is the dynamical matrix and
is the input vector, in the operating mode of the converter.
Thus, they consist of a linear combination of circuit voltages
and currents. For the mode, (2) can be solved analytically
(3)
where , , and
are the initial conditions for the mode. If the time during
which the circuit operates in the mode is , where is the
associated duty-cycle, the complete solution for the dynamics of
the converter can be obtained by employing the state vector at
time as the initial condition for the subsequent dynamics
of the mode. Nevertheless, the solution of (3) is com-
plicated by the need to evaluate the integral, which is a major
contribution to the computational overhead when analyzing the
0885-8993/03$17.00 © 2003 IEEE