High-Power-Factor Soft-Switched Boost Converter - Delta Products ...

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snubber circuit reduces the reverse-recovery-related losses of the rectifier and also ... “hard” switching of the active-snubber switch [5]–[9]. How- .... ping drive signals for the switches. ..... IEEE Power Electronics Specialists' Conf. (PESC),. Jun.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 21, NO. 1, JANUARY 2006

High-Power-Factor Soft-Switched Boost Converter Yungtaek Jang, Senior Member, IEEE, Milan M. Jovanovic´, Fellow, IEEE, Kung-Hui Fang, and Yu-Ming Chang

Abstract—A novel implementation of the high-power-factor (HPF) boost converter with active snubber is described. The snubber circuit reduces the reverse-recovery-related losses of the rectifier and also provides zero-voltage switching for the boost switch and zero-current switching for the auxiliary switch. The performance of the proposed approach was evaluated on an 80-kHz, 1.5-kW, universal-line range, HPF boost converter. The proposed technique improves the efficiency by approximately 2% at full load and low line. Index Terms—Auxiliary switch, boost converter, constant-frequency, power-factor correction (PFC), zero-current switching (ZCS), zero-voltage switching (ZVS).

I. INTRODUCTION

T

HE boost converter topology has been extensively used in various ac/dc and dc/dc applications. In fact, the front end of today’s ac/dc power supplies with power-factor correction (PFC) is almost exclusively implemented with boost topology. Also, the boost topology is used in numerous applications with battery-powered input to generate a high output voltage from a relatively low battery voltage. At higher power levels, the continuous-conduction-mode (CCM) boost converter is the preferred mode of operation for the implementation of a front end with PFC. As a result, in recent years, significant effort has been made to improve the performance of high-power boost converters. The majority of these development efforts have been focused on reducing the adverse effects of the reverse-recovery characteristic of the boost rectifier, especially for the conversion efficiency and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC). Generally, the reduction of reverse-recovery-related losses and EMC problems require that the boost rectifier is “softly” switched off, which is achieved by controlling the turn-off rate of its current [1]. So far, a number of soft-switched boost converters and their variations have been proposed [2]–[16]. All of them use additional components to form passive snubber or active snubber circuits that control the turn-off di/dt rate of the boost rectifier. The passive snubber approaches in [2]–[4] use only passive components such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, and rectifiers, whereas active snubber approaches employ one or more active switches. Although passive lossless snubbers can marginally improve efficiency, their performance is not good enough to make them Manuscript received November 8, 2004; revised June 3, 2005. This work was presented at INTELEC’04, Chicago, IL, September 19–23, 2004. Recommended by Associate Editor H. S. H. Chung. Y. Jang and M. M. Jovanovic´ are with the Power Electronics Laboratory, Delta Products Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 USA (e-mail: [email protected]). K.-H. Fang and Y.-M. Chang are with Delta Electronics, Inc., Taoyuan, Taiwan, R.O.C. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2005.861201

viable candidates for applications in high-performance PFC circuits. Generally, they suffer from increased component stresses and are not able to operate with the soft switching of the boost switch, which is detrimental in high-density applications that require increased switching frequencies. The simultaneous reduction of reverse-recovery losses and the soft switching of the boost switch can be achieved by active snubbers. So far, a large number of active snubber circuits have been proposed [5]–[16]. The majority of them offer the soft turn off of the boost rectifier, ZVS of the boost switch, and “hard” switching of the active-snubber switch [5]–[9]. However, a number of active-snubber implementations feature softswitching of all semiconductor components, i.e., in addition to the soft turn off of the boost rectifier, the boost switch and the active-snubber switch operate with ZVS or ZCS [10]–[16]. In this paper, a novel implementation of the soft-switched boost converter with active snubber is described. The major feature of these circuits is the soft switching of all semiconductor components. Specifically, the boost rectifier is switched off with a controlled turn-off di/dt rate, the boost switch is turned on with ZVS, and the auxiliary switch in the active snubber is turned off with ZCS. As a result, switching losses are reduced, which has beneficial effects on the conversion efficiency and EMC performance. II. SOFT-SWITCHED PFC BOOST CONVERTER Fig. 1 shows a conceptual implementation of the proposed soft-switched boost converter with ZCS of auxiliary switch . conAfter auxiliary switch is turned on, snubber inductor trols the rate of change of current in the rectifier to reduce reverse-recovery-related losses in boost rectifier . In addition, since the auxiliary-switch current cannot increase immediately , the auxiliary switch turns on because of snubber inductor with ZCS. During the period when auxiliary switch is turned on, snubber inductor and output capacitance of boost switch form a resonant circuit, hence the voltage across boost switch falls to zero by resonant ringing. As a result, boost switch turns on when its drain-to-source voltage is zero. To reset the snubber inductor current, it is necessary to in the loop consisting of snubber provide reset voltage V inductor and conducting switches S and , as shown in Fig. 1(a). As can be seen from Fig. 1(b), auxiliary switch can achieve ZCS if it is turned off after reset voltage V reduces snubber-inductor current to zero. Reset voltage V can be generated either by a resonant capacitor [12], [16] or by the winding of a low-power auxiliary transformer [10], [14], [15]. The proposed implementation of the soft-switched boost circuit is shown in Fig. 2. The circuit consists of voltage source , boost switch , boost rectifier , V , boost inductor

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JANG et al.: HIGH-POWER-FACTOR SOFT-SWITCHED BOOST CONVERTER

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Fig. 2. Proposed soft-switched boost converter.

Fig. 1. Conceptual implementation of soft-switched boost converter with ZCS of snubber switch S : (a) conceptual circuit and (b) key waveforms during turn-on of switch S .

energy-storage capacitor , load , and the active snubber circuit formed by auxiliary switch , snubber inductor , transformer TR, blocking diode , and clamp circuit . To facilitate the explanation of the circuit operation, Fig. 3 shows a simplified circuit diagram of the circuit in Fig. 2. In and clamp the simplified circuit, energy-storage capacitor capacitor are modeled by voltage sources V and V , and are respectively, by assuming that the values of large enough so that the voltage ripples across the capacitors are small compared to their dc voltages. In addition, boost inductor is modeled as constant current source by assuming is large enough so that during a switching that inductance cycle the current through it does not change significantly. Also, and transformer TR is modeled by magnetizing inductance an ideal transformer with turns ratio . Since the leakage inductance of transformer TR is connected in series , it is not separately shown in Fig. 3. with snubber inductor Finally, it is assumed that in the on state, semiconductors exhibit zero resistance, i.e., they are short circuits. However, the output capacitance of the switches, as well as the junction capacitance and the reverse-recovery charge of the rectifier are not neglected in this analysis. To further facilitate the analysis of operation, Fig. 4 shows the topological stages of the circuit in Fig. 3 during a switching cycle, whereas Fig. 5 shows its key waveforms. The reference directions of currents and voltages plotted in Fig. 5 are shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3. Simplified circuit diagram of the proposed converter shown in Fig. 2 along with reference directions of key currents and voltages.

As can be seen from the timing diagram of the drive signals for switches and S shown in Fig. 5(a) and (b), in the proposed is turned on prior to the turn on of circuit, auxiliary switch is turned off before boost switch switch . However, switch is turned off, i.e., the proposed circuit operates with overlapping drive signals for the switches. Prior to turn on of switch at , switches S and are flows through boost rectifier open and entire input current into load . After switch is turned on at , current starts flowing through winding of transformer TR, inducing the flow of current in winding , as shown in Fig. 4(a). Because, during this stage, output voltage V is impressed across , transformer winding voltages v and v are given winding by v

V

and V

v

(1) nV

(2)

1 for proper operation where it is required that of the circuit. Since v is constant, voltage applied across snubber inductor is also constant so that current increases linearly with a slope of V

v

V

nV

V

(3)

100

Fig. 4. (g) [T

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 21, NO. 1, JANUARY 2006

Topological stages during a switching period of the proposed circuit: (a) [T ], (h) [T T ], (i) [T T ], (j) [T T ], and (k) [T T ].

0T

0

0

0

At the same time, magnetizing current a slope given by V so that auxiliary switch current

0

also increases with

(4) is (5)

because . linAs current linearly increases, boost rectifier current early decreases at the same rate since the sum of and is , i.e., . Thereequal to constant input current fore, in the proposed circuit, the turn-off rate of the boost rectifier V

(6)

0T

]

, (b) [T

0T

]

, (c) [T

0T

]

, (d) [T

0T

]

, (e) [T

0T

]

, (f) [T

0T

]

,

can be controlled by proper design of turns ratio n of trans. Typically, for today’s former TR and snubber inductor fast-recovery rectifiers, the turn-off rate should be kept around 100 A S. when boost The topological stage in Fig. 4(a) ends at falls to zero. Due to a stored charge in the rectifier current rectifier, the rectifier current continues to flow in the negative direction, as shown in Figs. 4(b) and 5(j). Generally, for a properly and turns ratio n, this reverse-reselected snubber inductor covery current is substantially reduced compared to the corresponding current in a circuit without the boost rectifier turn-off rate control. After the stored charge is removed from the in Fig. 5, the rectifier regains its rectifier, which occurs at voltage blocking capability and the circuit enters the topological stage shown in Fig. 4(c). During this stage, junction capacitance of boost rectifier is charged and output capacitance of boost switch discharged through a resonance between parand with snubber inductor . The allel connection of

JANG et al.: HIGH-POWER-FACTOR SOFT-SWITCHED BOOST CONVERTER

101

condition needed for the zero-voltage turn on of switch , it is necessary that at the end of the resonance at v

V

V

(11) of transformer TR to

which limits maximum turns ratio

(12) 0.5 is selected, output capacitance If a turns ratio of of boost switch can be always discharged to zero regardless of the load and line conditions. Once the capacitance is fully , current continues to flow through the discharge at antiparallel diode of boost switch , as shown in Fig. 4(d). Because during this topological stage voltage v is impressed in the , current starts negative direction across snubber inductor linearly decreasing at the rate given by nV

Fig. 5. Key waveforms of the proposed converter.

expressions for boost-switch voltage v and snubber-inductor current during this resonance are V

(7)

and v

V

V

where characteristic impedance are defined as quency

(8) and resonant angular fre-

and

(9)

as illustrated in Fig. 5(e). As a result, auxiliary-switch current also starts linearly decreasing, whereas boot-switch current starts linearly increasing from a negative peak, as shown in Fig. 5(f) and (g). To achieve ZVS of boost switch , it is necessary to turn on boost switch before its current becomes pos, i.e., while current is flowing through the itive at antiparallel diode of switch . , boost-switch With boost switch turned on before continues to flow through closed switch after it current , as shown in Figs. 4(e) and 5(g). becomes positive at In this topological stage, current continues to decrease lincontinues to early toward zero, while boost-switch current linearly increase at the same rate. When current becomes zero , boost-switch current reaches so that the enat tire input current flows through boost switch , as shown in only carries a Fig. 4(f). At the same time, auxiliary switch magnetizing current. If the magnetizing inductance of the transformer is made high, the magnetizing current can be minimized, so that i.e., it can be made much smaller than input current auxiliary switch can be turned off with virtually zero current. is turned off with near ZCS at When auxiliary switch , magnetizing current begins charging output capacitance of auxiliary switch , as shown in Fig. 4(g). When reaches clamp voltage voltage v across auxiliary switch V , where V is the voltage across clamp capacitor , V is commutated into voltage source V magnetizing current through clamping diode , which models the clamp circuit. The switching and conduction losses of clamping diode are negligible because magnetizing current is designed to be very small. As shown in Fig. 4(h), during this stage, negative voltage V resets the magnetizing current with a rate

(10) From (8) it can be seen that to completely discharge output capacitance of boost switch and, therefore, create the

(13)

V

until magnetizing current

becomes zero at

(14) .

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After transformer TR is reset at , the circuit stays in the topological stage shown in Fig. 4(i) until boost switch is and the input current is commutated from opened at switch to its output capacitance , as shown in Fig. 4(j). charging with constant current , voltage v is Due to and input increasing linearly until it reaches V at is instantaneously commutated to boost rectifier, as current shown in Fig. 4(k). The circuit stays in the topological stage in when auxiliary switch is turned on Fig. 4(k) until again.

stress in the conventional boost converter without a snubber. However, the voltage stress of the auxiliary switch is

It should be noted that in the previous analysis the junction cawas neglected since it has no significant pacitance of diode effect on the operation of the circuit. In fact, this capacitance plays a role only during a brief interval after current reaches . Specifically, after , the junction capaczero at itance of diode and snubber inductor resonate creating a small negative current that makes auxiliary-switch current flow in the negative direction through the antiparallel diode of switch . Due to the conduction of its antiparallel diode, auxiliary switch voltage v does not immediately start to inis turned off at , i.e., shortly after crease after switch falls to zero. Instead, the rise of v is briefly delayed until the current through the antiparallel diode resonates back to zero. This delay has no tangible effect on the operation or the performance of the circuit.

as illustrated in Fig. 5(c) and (f). According to (15), the voltage stress of auxiliary switch can be controlled by the selection of clamp voltage V . Generally, this voltage is determined by the energy stored in magneduring the conduction period of auxiliary tizing inductance . If capacitor is switch and the value of clamp resistor selected large enough so the ripple of voltage across it is much smaller than the average value, voltage V can be calculated from

In summary, the major feature of the proposed circuit is the soft-switching of all semiconductor devices. Specifically, boost is turned switch is turned on with ZVS, auxiliary switch off with ZCS, and boost diode D is turned off with a controlled rate. As a result, the turn-on switching loss of turn-off the boost switch, the turn-off switching loss of the auxiliary switch, and reverse-recovery-related losses of the boost rectifier are greatly reduced, which minimizes the overall switching losses and, therefore, maximizes the conversion efficiency. In addition, soft-switching has a beneficial effect on EMI that may result in a smaller volume input filter. Due to ZVS of the boost switch, the most suitable implementation of the circuit in Fig. 2 is with the boost switch consisting of a metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) device or a parallel combination of MOSFETs. Similarly, due to the zero-current turn off of the auxiliary switch, the circuit in Fig. 2 is suitable for an insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) auxiliary switch. Auxiliary switch is turned on while voltage across it is equal to output voltage V . Despite this “hard” turn on of auxiliary switch , there is no significant performance penalty, since the output capacitance of IGBTs is much smaller than that of MOSFETs. In fact, since the overall switching loss of IGBTs is dominated by its turn-off loss due to the current tailing effect, the optimum switching strategy of IGBT is soft turn off, rather than soft turn on. Moreover, even an implementation with an IGBT boost switch is possible provided that a turn-off snubber capacitor is connected across the IGBT boost switch to reduce the turn-off loss due to the IGBTs current-tail effect. In this case, an IGBT with a co-packaged antiparallel diode or an external diode must be used. In the proposed circuit, the voltage and current stress on boost switch and boost rectifier are identical to the corresponding

V

v

V

(15)

while the current stress, neglecting residual reverse-recovery and magnetizing current , is current nV

V

V

(16)

(17)

where is the duty cycle of auxiliary switch , is the 1 is the switching frequency. switching period, and Since, from (17) V

V

(18)

the best way to minimize V is to maximize magnetizing inso that the power loss of the clamp circuit, i.e., ductance , is also minimized. Typically, for the power dissipation of a properly designed transformer TR, the clamp-circuit loss is negligible compared to the output power so it virtually does not affect the conversion efficiency. is determined from the desired The snubber inductor turn-off rate of the boost rectifier current defined in (6), i.e., nV

(19)

As can be seen from (19), to minimize the value of snubber inductor , it is desirable to maximize turns ratio n of the transformer. Since 0.5, the turns ratio of the transformer should not be much less than 0.5. Typically, the values of n that 400 V, are in the 0.3–0.5 range are optimal. Assuming that V 0.5, and 100 A S, the inductance value of snubber inductor is 2 H. It should be noted that the peak is reduced by the selection current stress of auxiliary switch of the maximum turns ratio of the transformer, as seen in (16). III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS The performance of the proposed boost converter with active snubber was evaluated on a 1.5 kW (375 V/3.95 A), 80 kHz, PFC circuit operating at universal-line range (85–264 V ). Since the drain voltage of boost switch is clamped to bulk , the peak voltage stress on boost switch is apcapacitor proximately 380 V. The peak current stress on switch , which

JANG et al.: HIGH-POWER-FACTOR SOFT-SWITCHED BOOST CONVERTER

occurs at full load and low line, is approximately 27.7 A. There500 V, 25 fore, three IRFP460LC MOSFET’s (V 20 A, R 0.27 ) from IRF were used for boost switch . A high speed HGTG12N60A4 IGBT (V 600 V, 23 A) since its maxfrom Fairchild was used as auxiliary switch 380 60 imum drain voltage is 440 V, as described in (15). To clamp the voltage across switch , clamp diode dc (BYM26C), clamp capacitor (0.1 F, (5.1 k , 2 W) were used as 100 V), and clamp resistor shown in Fig. 2. The calculated maximum power dissipation of is approximately 0.7 W. clamp resistor Since boost diode D should block the bulk voltage and conduct the peak input current, an RHRP3060 diode ( 600 V, 30 A) from Fairchild was used. Two 600 V, 15 A) were RHRP1560 diodes ( and diode . used as diode , the To obtain the desired inductance of boost inductor boost inductor was built using two glued toroidal powder cores 60) from Magnetics and 72 turns of magnet wire (77071, (AWG #18). An external snubber inductor was connected in series with of transformer TR, as shown in Fig. 2. To obtain winding required snubber inductance that is approximately 1.7 H at full load, the external snubber inductor was built using a toroidal 60) from Arnold and six turns of powder core (MS90060, magnet wire (AWG #16). Transformer TR was built using a toroidal ferrite core (A07 25 15 13 ), ten turns of magnet wire (AWG# 18) for , and 40 turns of magnet wire (AWG# 21) for winding . Magnetizing inductance measured across winding of transformer TR is approximately 12 mH. The winding leakage inductance measured across winding of transformer TR is approximately 0.3 H. Two high voltage aluminum capacitors (470 F, 450 V ) to meet the hold-up time were used for bulk capacitor requirement. Fig. 6 shows the oscillograms of key waveforms of the experimental converter when it delivers full power from the low line. As can be seen from the corresponding waveforms in Fig. 5, there is good agreement between the experimental and theoretical waveforms. Fig. 7 shows the measured efficiencies of the experimental converter with and without the active snubber at the minimum and the maximum line voltages as functions of the output power. The active snubber improves the conversion efficiency for both line voltages. Nevertheless, the efficiency improvement is more pronounced at the minimum line and higher power levels where the reverse-recovery losses are greater. Specifically, at the maximum line (265 V ), the efficiency improvement at 1.5 kW 1.5 kW, the is 0.5%. However, at the minimum line and active snubber improves the efficiency by approximately 2%, which translates into approximately 20% reduction of all losses. Furthermore, at the same power levels, the temperatures of the semiconductor components in the implementation with the active snubber are significantly lower than those in the implementation without the snubber. Finally, since the boost switch and auxiliary switch operate with soft switching, the rectifier reduces switching losses and

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Fig. 6. Measured key waveforms of experimental converter at P 85 V . Time base: 2 s/div. and V

=

= 1500 W

Fig. 7. Measured efficiencies of the 80-kHz, 1.5-kW experimental converter with (dashed lines) hard switching and (solid lines) soft switching at V 85 V and 265 V as functions of the output power.

=

thereby improves the spectral performance of the rectifier for less EMI.

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IV. CONCLUSION A novel implementation of the PFC boost converter with an active snubber that can achieve soft-switching of all semiconductor devices in the power stage has been introduced. By using an active snubber that consists of an auxiliary switch, a snubber inductor, and a reset circuit, boost switch is turned on with is turned off with ZCS, and boost ZVS, auxiliary switch diode is turned off softly using a controlled rate. As a result, the turn-on switching losses in the boost switch, the turn-off switching loss in the auxiliary switch, and reverse-recovery-related losses in the boost diode are greatly reduced, which maximizes the conversion efficiency. The performance of the proposed converter was verified on an 80-kHz, 1.5-kW prototype circuit that was designed to operate from a universal ac-line input. The proposed technique improves the efficiency by approximately 2% at full load and low line. REFERENCES [1] M. K. Kazimierczuk, “Reverse recovery of power pn junction diodes,” J. Circuits, Syst., Comput., vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 589–606, Dec. 1995. [2] K. M. Smith and K. M. Smedley, “Engineering design of lossless passive soft switching methods for PWM converters,” in Proc. IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conf. (APEC), 1998, pp. 1055–1061. [3] S. Ben-Yakov and G. Ivensky. Passive lossless snubbers for high frequency PWM converters. presented at IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conf. (APEC) Professional Education Sem.. [CD-ROM] [4] C. J. Tseng and C. L. Chen, “Passive lossless snubbers for dc/dc converters,” in Proc. IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conf. (APEC), 1998, pp. 1049–1054. [5] R. Streit and D. Tollik, “High efficiency telecom rectifier using a novel soft-switched boost-based input current shaper,” in Proc. International Telecommunication Energy Conf. (INTELEC), Oct. 1991, pp. 720–726. [6] G. Hua, C. S. Leu, and F. C. Lee, “Novel zero-voltage-transition PWM converters,” in Proc. IEEE Power Electronics Specialists’ Conf. (PESC), Jun. 1992, pp. 55–61. [7] J.-H. Kim, D. Y. Lee, H. S. Choi, and B. H. Cho, “High performance boost PFP (power factor pre-regulator) with an improved ZVT (Zero Voltage Transition) converter,” in Proc. IEEE Applied Power Electronics (APEC) Conf., 2001, pp. 337–342. [8] B. Ivanovic and Z. Stojiljkovic, “A novel active soft switching snubber designed for boost converter,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 658–665, May 2004. [9] H. Bodur and A. F. Bakan, “A new ZVT-ZCT-PWM dc/dc converter,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 676–684, May 2004. [10] D. C. Martins, F. J. M. de Seixas, J. A. Brilhante, and I. Barbi, “A family of dc-to-dc PWM converters using a new ZVS commutation cell,” in Proc. IEEE Power Electronics Specialists’ Conf. (PESC), 1993, pp. 524–530. [11] C. A. Canesin and I. Barbi, “Comparison of experimental loses among six different topologies for a 1.6 kW boost converter, using IGBT’s,” in Proc. IEEE Power Electronics Specialists’ Conf. (PESC), 1995, pp. 1265–1271. [12] G. Moschopoulos, P. Jain, and G. Joós, “A novel zero-voltage switched PWM boost converter,” in Proc. IEEE Power Electronics Specialists’ Conf. (PESC), 1995, pp. 694–700. [13] J. Bassett, “New, zero voltage switching, high frequency boost converter topology for power factor correction,” in Proc. Int. Telecommunication Energy Conf. (INTELEC), Oct. 1995, pp. 813–820. [14] R. L. Lin, Y. Zhao, and F. C. Lee, “Improved soft-switching ZVT converters with active snubber,” in Proc. IEEE Applied Power Electronics (APEC) Conf., 1998, pp. 1063–1069.

[15] H. Matsuo, F. Kurokawa, T. Oshikata, and Y. Yamawaki, “Analysis of dynamic characteristics for the partially resonant active filter with the DSP,” in Proc. International Telecommunication Energy Conf. (INTELEC), Oct. 2001, pp. 81–88. [16] M. L. S. Martins and H. L. Hey, “Self-commutated auxiliary circuit ZVT PWM converters,” IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 19, no. 6, pp. 1435–1445, Nov. 2004.

Yungtaek Jang (S’92–M’95–SM’01) was born in Seoul, Korea. He received the B.S. degree from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in 1982, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1991 and 1995, respectively, all in electrical engineering. From 1982 to 1988, he was a Design Engineer at Hyundai Engineering Co., Korea. Since 1996, he has been a Senior Member of R&D Staff at the Power Electronics Laboratory, Delta Products Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC (the U.S. subsidiary of Delta Electronics, Inc., Taiwan, R.O.C.). He holds 14 U.S. patents. His research interests include resonant power conversion, converter modeling, control techniques, and low harmonic rectification. Dr. Jang received the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS Prize Paper Award for best paper published in 1996

Milan M. Jovanovic´ (F’01) was born in Belgrade, Serbia. He received the Dipl.Ing. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Belgrade. Presently, he is the Chief Technology Officer of the Power Systems Business Group of Delta Electronics, Inc., Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

Kung-Hui Fang was born in Taiwan, R.O.C., on Feb. 15, 1969. He received the M.A. degree from National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, in 1994. Since 1994, he has been a Power Supply Design Engineer at Delta Electronics Inc., Taoyuan, Taiwan. His interests include power electronic circuit topology and control theory.

Yu-Ming Chang was born in Taiwan, R.O.C., on Dec. 15, 1964. He received the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, in 1991 and 1998, respectively. He is a Business Director of the Telecom Power Business Unit, Delta Electronics Inc., Taoyuan, Taiwan. His interests include circuit topology innovation of power converters, control methodology, and packaging technologies.