Alternating Asymmetrical Phase-Shift Modulation for Full-Bridge Converters with Balanced Switching Losses to Reduce Thermal Imbalances

Phase-shift modulated full bridge converters suffer from thermal imbalances of the inverter switches. The lagging leg switches are subject to larger commutation currents compared to those of the leading leg as the transformer current reduces in the freewheeling interval. Furthermore, after this interval, the energy in the series inductance may not be large enough to achieve zero-voltage switching (ZVS) for the leading leg. Both effects result in thermal imbalances. This paper analyzes the alternating-asymmetrical phase-shift modulation to achieve balanced conduction and switching losses for all four switches while showing that this modulation is easily implemented on standard DSPs. The modulation has been implemented to LLC converters where experimental measurement results proved its effectiveness for LLC converters by reducing the temperature deviation from 6.3 K to only 0.2 K such that the peak temperature is reduced from 95 °C to 92 °C. The paper also proves that the modulation can be utilized to improve the efficiency of LLC converters operated at very low gains while simultaneously reducing the junction temperature of all four switches compared to the conventional complementary modulation. Finally, EMI implications are analyzed, which show that the modulation may be beneficial for reducing the common-mode emissions around the operating frequency.