Interleaved DC–DC converters are extensively employed in high-power applications to reduce input/output current ripple, elements current stress, and improve reliability. In order to eliminate the switching losses in interleaved converters, zero voltage transition (ZVT) technique can be used. This study presents a new compact ZVT cell appropriate for interleaved converters. This cell employs a low number of elements while imposing no extra voltage and current stresses on the converter main semiconductors. The proposed cell is applied to an interleaved boost converter to achieve full soft switching feature. The resulting ZVT interleaved boost converter is completely analysed and its design procedure is provided. Also, the converter is compared with the latest prominent counterparts presented in literature. Besides, its operation and theoretical analysis are validated by a 200 W and 100 kHz prototype. Finally, the proposed ZVT cell is applied to other types of interleaved converters and a family of ZVT interleaved converters is introduced.

Grid-tied inverters, used in renewable energy sources, are exposed to distortions emitted by various sources including the reference signal, external power grid, and DC-link along with harmonics created by the pulse width modulation unit. However, the effect of these sources on grid-tied inverter output, especially near the resonant frequency of the inverter's filter, is unknown. In this study, a comprehensive harmonic model of the grid-tied inverter is presented by considering all three types of external sources. The proposed model can be utilised for low and high-frequency harmonic emission of grid-connected inverters. A new analytical expression is introduced as an indicator of the maximum possible individual grid current harmonic in the case of harmonic injection of multiple external sources. The impact of series damping resistor on harmonic rejection ability of the inverter is analysed at the range of frequencies around resonance. The simulation and experimental results fulfil the proposed harmonic model of the inverter.

The Internet of Things (IoT) connects billions of smart devices through wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, to ensure the power supply for numerous passive devices in a WSN, it is necessary to replace batteries periodically, which will undoubtedly increase maintenance costs. This study proposes a capacitive coupling structure that is different from the previous capacitive power transfer (CPT) structures. The proposed structure can allow the positional variation of the receiver, and multiple receivers to be charged at the same time. Both theoretical and experimental results demonstrate that the power transmission is less affected by the positional variation of the pickup plates in the vertical and horizontal directions. In this study, all coupling capacitors between the plates are considered and the equivalent circuit model is derived. Further output characteristics of the circuit are derived and analysed. The dimensions of the structure are designed and simulated by using the EM full wave simulation. A prototype is designed to verify that a battery can be charged based on capacitive coupling. A 60 mAh rechargeable lithium-ion button battery is fully charged in 250 min, and the output power is ∼36 mW during charging.

In the LCL-filtered grid-tied inverter, the classical low-cost control strategy which is composed of the single converter-side current control and the unit grid voltage feedforward compensation, is commonly employed to inject the sinusoidal current into the utility. However, the inverter output admittance features the non-passive behaviour, which indicates that the harmonic currents may be amplified under the disturbances of the grid voltage and the grid impedance. Therefore, two dedicated current loops based on only the converter-side current feedback are proposed, which consist of the low-pass filter-based current regulation and the high-pass filter-based active damping (HFAD). The mixed asymmetrical regular sampling method is further used to reduce the control delay of the HFAD. Moreover, the low-pass filter-based feedforward is developed to make a compromise between the disturbance rejection and the stability. Fair comparisons with other typical control strategies are made through analysing the virtual resistor in parallel with the filter capacitor, which reveals that the positive virtual resistance at the frequency lower than half of the switching frequency is maintained. With the elaborated control parameters, the exhaustive experimental results finally verify the effectiveness of the proposed method in passivating the inverter output admittance.

Valley switching is one of the most efficient methods to decrease the switching losses in DC/DC converters. It uses a resonance between the converter's inductor and parasitic output capacitance of a metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor. In this study, the drawbacks of the valley switching in buck light-emitting-diode (LED) drivers are investigated. It shows that in spite of decreasing the switching losses, the valley switching method reduces its efficiency in some conditions. Also, it is clarified that the valley switching method not only causes current fluctuation in boost power factor correction converters but also malfunctions the buck LED drivers' performance. In this study, a semi-valley switching and its implementation are introduced to solve these problems. In general, it is shown that the proposed method improves both the efficiency and the performance of the buck LED driver, simultaneously. The methodologies are implemented in an experimental prototype to verify the proposed method.