Specific Integrated Circuits for Power Electronics

SummaryThis paper shows through examples that micrelectronics plays animportant role in modern power electronics devices.The main requirements of power electronics designers are reliability, performances, easy maintenance, user friendly interface, ruggedness to electromagentic, mechanical and thermal constraints. Besides the development of new types of power semiconductors and the improvement of existing onces, integrated circuits have increased the performance and relibility of the control of power equipments. Analog integrated circuits are used for simple, but high speed functions like controlling switched mode power supplies.Microprocessors have brought the versatility of programmed logic, the ability to implement comples control algorithms, and to handle communications with the operator and with different parts of an equipment, To avoid the saturation of the microprocessor the saturation of the microprocessor by the more and more numerous tasks they have to perform, one can resort to multiprocessor sy...