Optimum design of a single-phase Power Pulsating Buffer (PPB) with PCB-integrated inductor technologies

This paper presents the design procedure for a Buck Power Pulsating Buffer, aimed at optimising the power density of a single phase AC/DC converter. It compares different technologies for the buffer capacitor and for the inductor with printed-circuit board (PCB) integration in mind. As ceramic capacitors are considered (X6S and Ceralink technologies), a non-linear model was developed for the capacitance and ESR variations. This differs from existing literature because film capacitors are usually used and simple models are appropriate for such technologies. Two low-cost, highly integrated inductor technologies are compared. Results allow a fair comparison of these different capacitor and inductor technologies, and it found that the design based on X6S capacitors and planar inductors offers the smaller volume and best efficiency. Moreover, the optimisation procedure favours an original approach, where the converter operates at zero voltage switching (ZVS) along the entire mains period at fixed switching frequency.