A New Method for Estimating the DC-DC Converter Performance under Low Voltage and High Current Application

Under low voltage and high current application with soft switching operation, the conduction loss usually dominates the devices’ power loss(I<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup>R) at heavy load. Moreover, it’s found that different converter shows significant differences on the heavy load. Traditional method adopts Total Devices Power Ratings (TDPR, TDPR=ΣIV) to explain the differences. However, the essential relationship between devices’ stress and power loss is not revealed. In order to reveal the devices stress and power loss, this paper presents a new method called Circuit Level Figure of Merit(CLFOM) for explanation. It can reveal the devices’ stress and power loss in a derivable way, and the minimum power loss at heavy load among different converters are compared in this paper.