Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Teruaki Tanaka

Shuta Ishikawa

Satoshi Azuma

An A/D converter converts an output from a temperature sensor into a digital signal. A service life diagnostic unit diagnoses a service life of a power module based on a signal indicating a temperature outputted from the A/D converter. An output unit generates a signal representing a diagnostic result and outputs the generated signal from an output terminal to outside.

Power module

A power module including: a power conversion unit including N switching-element pairs; and a control circuit. The control circuit receives N command signals, which correspond respectively to the N switching-element pairs, and a shared enable signal. The control circuit is configured to, when the enable signal is negated, execute all-off control of turning off all of the switching elements constituting the power conversion unit, and when the enable signal is asserted, execute normal control, dead-time addition control, and dead-time compensation control for each of the switching-element pairs per period of a corresponding command signal.

A temperature data coding unitincreases the data resolution in a high temperature range and reduces the data resolution in a low temperature range, and makes the data length of the temperature data a fixed length. When carrying out numerical estimation of the fixed length code value in terms of a 2's complement numerical code value, the temperature data coding unitgenerates coded data that increases with an increase of the pre-coded temperature data in terms of the 2's complement numerical code value.

Growing community of inventors

Chiyoda-ku, Japan

Teruaki Tanaka