Abstract
A compact and highly efficient unidirectional DC−DC converter is required as a battery charger for electrical vehicles, which will rapidly become widespread in the near future. The single active bridge (SAB) converter is proposed as a simple and high-frequency isolated unidirectional converter, which is comprised of an active H-bridge converter in the primary side, an isolated high frequency transformer, and a rectifying secondary diode bridge output circuit. This paper presents a novel, unidirectional, high-frequency isolated DC−DC converter called a Secondary Resonant Single Active Bridge (SR−SAB) DC−DC converter. The circuit topology of the SR−SAB converter is a resonant capacitor connected to each diode in parallel in order to construct the series resonant circuit in the secondary circuit. As a result, the SR−SAB converter achieves a higher total power factor at the high frequency transformer and a unity voltage conversion ratio under the unity transformer turns ratio. Small and nonsignificant overshoot values of current and voltage waveforms are observed. Soft-switching commutations of the primary H-bridge circuit and the soft recovery of secondary diode bridge are achieved. The operating philosophy and design method of the proposed converter are presented. Output power control using transformer frequency variation is proposed. The effectiveness of the SR−SAB converter was verified by experiments using a 1 kW, 48 VDC, and 20 kHz laboratory prototype.