Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Seungbum Lim

David J Perreault

David M Otten

Rachel S Yang

Alex J Hanson

In accordance with the concepts, circuits and techniques described herein, a converter circuit is provided having multiple half-bridge switching cells that can be selectively controlled using one or more switching patterns to convert a source voltage to a desired output voltage over wide voltage and power ranges while maintaining zero-voltage switching and/or zero-current switching. The converter circuit includes capacitive elements disposed between center switching nodes of the half-bridge switching cells and fixed potentials and a magnetic energy storage element coupling the center switching nodes of first and second half-bridge switching cells. A controller is coupled to the converter circuit to monitor, control and apply one or more switching patterns the half-bridge switching cells such that components of the half-bridge switching cells are switched having a minimal or zero voltage (or current) across them.

Wide-operating-range resonant-transition soft-switched converter

A power converter circuit rectifies a line voltage and applies the rectified voltage to a stack of capacitors. Voltages on the capacitors are coupled to a plurality of regulating converters to be converted to regulated output signals. The regulated output signals are combined and converted to a desired DC output voltage of the power converter. Input currents of the regulating converters are modulated in a manner that enhances the power factor of the power converter.

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Cambridge, MA, United States of America

Seungbum Lim