Improved Circuit Design and Adaptive Burst Mode Control in PSFB Converters for Higher Efficiency Over a Wide Power Range

This paper presents an improved circuit design of Gallium Nitride (GaN) based phase shifted full bridge (PSFB) converters along with a new adaptive burst mode control strategy, to achieve high efficiency over a wide power range, including light loads. The main challenges of PSFB converters addressed in this paper are: load-dependent zero-voltage switching (ZVS), transformer saturation, and secondary side ringing. Since switching losses of GaN FETs are dominant at light loads, adaptive burst mode control can be employed to improve the efficiency at lower output power. By periodically switching output current between 0 A and minimum ZVS current, adaptive burst mode control can enable both smaller effective switching frequency and lower switching losses. A correction factor ‘k’ is adopted in the adaptive burst mode control’s current loop PI calculation so that the output current can switch fast without any overshoot that increases switches’ current stress. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed circuit and controller design, a 375 V input, 70 V output, 800 W PSIM simulation model as well as experimental prototype are developed and tested. The experimental results demonstrate the practical benefits of the proposed adaptive burst mode control.