Back To Basics: Stabilizing Your Power Factor Correction Stage

Focus:

A PFC stage becomes mandatory in Europe if the average input power of your converter exceeds 75 W. Despite a very low crossover frequency, a PFC boost converter remains a closed-loop system delivering a high-voltage output. Therefore, properly stabilizing the converter is key to achieving reliable and long-term operation. This article sheds light on how to do that with the aid of modern simulation tools. This discussion begins with a review of the popular design choices for architecture, topology, control mode and other operating techniques used in the PFC stage. It then explains the concepts used to simply model the control-to-output transfer function of this stage, which leads us to a suitable compensation scheme. Simulation of the PFC stage using SIMPLIS enables us to quickly check the performance of the compensated circuit.

What you’ll learn:

• How to create a first-order model of a PFC stage and used that to derive its control-to- output transfer function
• How to compensate a PFC stage and verify compensator performance using SIMPLIS

View the Source

Author & Publication:

Christophe Basso, Future Electronics, Toulouse, France, How2Power Today, Feb 15 2022

This article summary appears
in the HOW2POWER Design Guide.

The Design Guide offers
organized access to
hundreds of articles
on dozens of power conversion
and power management topics.

The Design Guide search results
include exclusive summaries
and accurate "how to" analysis
to help you make faster,
more informed decisions.

Search
for more articles