An interleaved, FPGA-controlled, multi-phase and multi-switch synchronous boost converter for fuel cell applications

This work describes the practical implementation of an interleaved multi-phase, multi-switch boost converter for fuel cell applications. The paper aims to validate the concept of digitally-controlled Multi-Interleaving Boost Converter (MIBC) for fuel cell applications, from two-phase, four-legs per phase, synchronous boost converter, abbreviated as 2-4-MIBC. Compared with the Interleaved Boost Converter (IBC), MIBC exhibits interesting performance in terms of magnetics, input and output current ripple, part count and distributed power losses. A potential field of application is indeed medium and higher power fuel cell front-end converters, where minimizing input current ripple is significant but also redundancy and reliability are crucial. Actually, this approach covers all these aspects since provide module and device redundancy with real-time and flexible digital control reconfiguration. Relevant aspects related to design, modeling, simulation and experimental verification of 1 kW, FPGA-controlled, 2-4-MIBC are treated in this paper.