HIGH STEP-UP BOOST CONVERTER WITH COUPLED

INDUCTOR AND SWITCHED CAPACITOR

Yi Zhao1, Wuhua Li1, Yan Deng1, Xiangning He1, Simon Lambert2, Volker Pickert2
1. College of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang University
Hangzhou, 310027, P.R. China
Email: woohualee@zju.edu.cn
2. School of Electrical, Electronic & Computer Engineering, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK
Email: volker.pickert@newcastle.ac.uk
Keywords: step-up, coupled inductor, switched capacitor,
Boost

Abstract
Many industrial applications require non-isolated high step-up
single-phase DC/DC converters. Some existed conventional
DC/DC converters have the disadvantages of large duty cycle,
high switch voltage stress and high peak current. The
proposed converter can provide very high voltage gain
without extreme duty cycle due to the voltage doubler cell,
which is composed of a coupled inductor, a switched
capacitor and an additional diode. The converter with active
clamp scheme can recycle the leakage energy. Unfortunately,
it increases the topology complexity. The presented converter,
which employs the passive lossless clamp circuit instead of
the active clamp circuit, can achieve the similar functions and
show better performance than its active-clamp counterpart.
High efficiency and high power density is achieved due to the
leakage energy recycle and output diode reverse-recovery
alleviation.

1 Introduction
With the rapid development of the renewable generation
system, high step-up DC-DC converters are eagerly called for,
because these converters are required to transform the low
voltages of the clean sources like photovoltaic arrays and fuel
cells to the high voltages for the grid-connected inverters [1,
2]. The common features of the converters in these
applications are high step-up, high efficiency and
non-isolation.
Generally speaking, the classic boost converter is not a good
choice for the high step-up conversion for the following three
reasons. Firstly, an extremely high duty-cycle must be used to
obtain the steep conversion ratio, which causes serious losses
on the power devices due to their parasitic parameters.
Secondly, low on-resistance active switches and good
performance diodes can not be adopted due to the high
This work is sponsored by the National Nature Science
Foundation of China (50907058), the Power Electronics
S&E Development Program of Delta Environmental &

voltage stress. At last, the reverse-recovery problem of the

output diode is severe due to its short conduction time. All
these factors degrade the efficiency and limit the power level
[3, 4].
To solve the above-mentioned problems, the coupled
inductors are employed in [5, 6] as shown in Fig.1. By
inducing the coupled inductor, the voltage gain of the
converter is extended, so the extremely high duty-cycle is
avoided. Moreover, the voltage stress of the active switches is
reduced significantly. Hence, the low on-resistance switches
can be adopted to improve the efficiency. Furthermore, the
reverse-recovery problem of the output diode is partly
alleviated due to the leakage inductance of the coupled
inductor. Additionally, the voltage spikes caused by the
leakage inductance of the coupled inductor are depressed and
the energy stored in the leakage inductance is transferred to
the output load. However, the voltage stress of the output
diode is still high. Meanwhile the resonance between the
leakage inductance and the stray capacitor of the output diode
causes the EMI problem and increases the losses. Therefore, a
RCD snubber is employed in [5] to mitigate the problems.
In this paper, a novel high step-up converter with a coupled
inductor and a switched capacitor is proposed. Compared
with the converter in Fig.1, a small capacitor and a diode are
employed to eliminate the resonance between the leakage
inductance and the stray capacitor of the output diode. Also
the voltage gain is further extended and the voltage stress of
the output diode is decreased. Furthermore, the coupled
inductor transfer the energy during the whole switching
period in the forward mode and the flyback mode, thus the
volume of the magnetic material is reduced.

.
Fig.1 Boost converter with coupled inductor

Education Foundation (DREM2009001) and the China

2 Proposed converter and operation principle

Postdoctoral Science Foundation (200902625).

The proposed converter is shown in Fig.2.(a). The primary

inductor La is coupled to the secondary inductor Lb. The

coupling reference is marked by *. The clamp circuit is
composed of a clamp diode Dc and a clamp capacitor Cc,
which can reduce the voltage stress of the active switch S and
recycle the energy stored in the leakage inductance. By
employing a switched capacitor Cs, an inductor Lb and a diode
Ds, the voltage gain is extended and resonance between the
leakage inductance and the stray capacitor of the output diode
is eliminated.
The coupled inductor is modeled as a combination of a
magnetizing inductor, a leakage inductance and an ideal
transformer with corresponding turns ratio [7]. The equivalent
circuit of the proposed converter is shown in Fig.2.(b), where
Lm is the magnetizing inductor of the coupled inductor; Lk is
the leakage inductance; N is the turns ratio n2/n1; Cs1 and Cs2
are the equivalent variable capacitors when the diodes begin
to suffer reverse voltages, otherwise during the rest of the
time, Cs1 and Cs2 are small enough to be neglected.

secondary winding is limited by the leakage inductance Lk.

Subinterval 2 [t1~t2]: The switch S is turned of at t1, then the
clamp diode Dc begin to conduct. The voltage of the switch S
is clamped to the voltage on the capacitor Cc. The leakage
inductance Lk begins to resonate with the switched capacitor
Cs and the clamp capacitor Cc. Because the leakage
inductance is small and the voltages across the Cs and Cc are
almost constant, the current through the leakage inductance
decrease linearly, as well as the current through the secondary
winding. This process can be considered as that the leakage
inductance is discharged by the voltage across the clamp
capacitor.

(a) Proposed converter

(b) Equivalent circuit of the proposed converter

Fig.3 Key waveforms of the converter

Fig.2 Proposed converter and its equivalent circuit

During one switching period, there are seven main
subintervals. The key waveforms are sketched in Fig.3, where
iLk is the current through the leakage inductance Lk, which is
also the input current; vds is the voltage across the active
switch S; imos and iDc are the current through the active switch
and the clamp diode; ic and vcc are the current and the voltage
of the clamp capacitor Cc; is is the current through the
secondary winding of the coupled inductor; vDo, vDs, iDo and
iDs are the voltages and currents of the diodes Do and Ds. The
equivalent circuits for each subinterval are shown in Fig.4.
Subinterval 1 [t0~t1]: Before t1, the switch S is in the on-state.
The output diode Do and the clamp diode Dc are anti-biased.
The magnetizing inductor is charged by the input voltage,
thus the magnetizing current increases gradually almost in a
linear way. In the meantime, the energy is transferred to the
switched capacitor Cs through the diode Ds by the coupled
inductor in the forward mode. The current through the

(a) Subinterval 1
n1

n2

Dc

Cs

Do

Lk
Vin

Lm
S

Cc

Ds

(b) Subinterval 2

Co

RL

of Ds is alleviated.
Subinterval 4 [t3~t4]: At t3 the voltage across Cs1 is high
enough to cause the output diode to conduct. Compared with
other capacitors, Cs1 is small enough to be neglected. The
leakage inductance Lk begins to resonate with the clamp
capacitor Cc and the switched capacitor Cs. The voltage of Cs
decreases. The current of the leakage inductance decreases.
The energy stored in the magnetizing inductor starts to be
transferred to the output side.

(c) Subinterval 3
n1

n2

Dc
Lk

Vin

Do

Ds

Lm
S

Cs

Cc

Co

RL

(d) Subinterval 4

(e) Subinterval 5

Subinterval 5 [t4~t5]: At t4 the current through the leakage

inductance falls to zero. The leakage inductance and the
capacitors Cs and Cc stop resonating. The magnetizing
inductor is discharged linearly. The coupled inductor transfers
the energy to output in flyback mode. The small voltage
ripple across the switch S is caused by the resonance between
the leakage inductance and the stray capacitor of the active
switch.
Subinterval 6 [t5~t6]: The active switch S is turned on at t5.
The current through the leakage inductance begins to increase.
The increasing rate of the leakage current is controlled by the
voltage of the clamp capacitor, as well as the dropping rate of
the output current.
Subinterval 7 [t6~t7]: The current of the secondary winding
falls to zero at t6. The equivalent stray capacitor of the output
diode Cs2 begins to resonate with the leakage inductance. The
voltage of Cs2 increases while the voltage of Ds decreases at
the same rate. The current falling rate of the output diode is
limited by the leakage inductance, so the reverse-recovery
problem of Do is alleviated.
At t7 the voltage of Ds falls to zero and the voltage of Cs2 rises
to the voltage of the clamp capacitor Cc. The magnetizing
inductor is charged by the input voltage and the energy is
transferred to the switched capacitor by the coupled inductor
again.

3 Performance analyses
(f) Subinterval 6

To simplify the analysis, the voltages on the clamp capacitor

Cc and the switched capacitor Cs are considered to be constant,
and the current through the magnetizing inductor is
considered to be constant.
3.1 Voltage gain

(g) Subinterval 7
Fig.4 Operation processes of the proposed converter

The losses and the parasitic parameters of the power devices

are not considered in this analysis, such as the leakage
inductance of the coupled inductor and the stray capacitor of
the diodes. A switching period can be separated into two
pieces. When the switch is in the on-state, the magnetizing
inductor is charged by the input voltage:

Subinterval 3 [t2~t3]: The current through the secondary

(1)
VLm_charge Vin
winding falls to zero at t2, then the equivalent capacitor Cs1
begins to work. During this extremely short period, the
voltages of Cs and Cc almost stay still. So it can be considered And the voltage of the switched capacitor can be expressed
that Cs1 is resonated with the leakage inductance Lk. The by:
voltage across Cs1 rises while the current through Lk decreases.
Vcc N Vin
(2)
The current falling rate of the diode Ds is limited by the
leakage inductance. Therefore, the reverse-recovery problem

When the switch is in the off-state, the magnetizing inductor

is discharged, and the voltage across the inductor can be
derived by:

VLm_discharge

Vout
 Vin
N 1

The voltage stress of the output diode is lower than the output
voltage.

(3)

According to the inductor volt-second balance principle, the

voltage gain can be obtained by:





N 1
1 D

Vout
Vin

(4)


Compared with the classic boost converter, the voltage gain

of the converter is extended greatly. The voltage gain is even
higher than the converter in [6]. Fig.5 shows the gain
extension effect with different turns ratios coupled inductors
at different duty cycles.
When N=0, it is a conventional boost converter. As the turns
ratio increases, the voltage gain increases greatly. Extreme
duty cycle can be avoided. A proper turns ratio can be
designed to optimize the load regulation performance of the
proposed converter.

















3.2 Voltage stresses

By neglecting the voltage ripple on the clamp capacitor, the
voltage stress of the active switch is given by:

Vin
1 D

Vout
N 1

(5)

The relationship between the voltage stress, the output

voltage and the turns ratio of the coupled inductor is sketched
in Fig.5. It can be derived that as the turns ratio increases, the
voltage stress decreases sharply. So high performance
switches can be used to improve the efficiency.
The voltage stress of the clamp diode is equal to that of the
active switch. The voltage stress of the output diode is
expressed by:

Vstress _ Do

N Vout
N 1

Fig.5: Voltage stress reduction effect

3.3 Effect of the leakage inductance
By employing the clamp circuit, the voltage spikes caused by
the leakage inductance are eliminated and the energy stored in
the leakage inductance is transferred to output. When the
active switch is on and the energy is transferred to the
switched capacitor, the current impulsion is depressed by the
leakage inductance effectively. Especially to the diodes Do
and Ds, the reverse-recovery problem is partly solved by the
leakage inductance. The relationship between the leakage
inductance and the current falling rate of Do and Ds is
expressed by:

Vout
N ( N  1) Lk

(7)

4 Experimental results and analysis

Fig.5 Voltage gain of the proposed converter

Vstress _ switch

Turns ratio (N)

di D (t )
dt







(6)

A 500W prototype is built to verify the theoretical analysis.

The parameters of the converter are shown in the following:
output power: 500W; input voltage: 40V; output voltage:
380V; switching frequency: 100kHz; active switch:
STW90NF20; clamp diode: MUR1020; other diodes:
MUR1560; clamp capacitor: 2.2F; switched capacitor: 4.7F;
output capacitor: 470F; Turns ratio: 14/28; Magnetizing
inductor: 95H; leakage inductance: 0.6H.
The waveforms from Fig.6 to Fig.9 are obtained at full load
with 40V input voltage.
The performance of the clamp circuit is shown in Fig.6. vcc is
the voltage across the clamp capacitor. vds is the voltage of the
switch. iDc is the current through the clamp diode. When the
switch is turned off, the voltage of the main switch is clamped
to the voltage on the clamp capacitor. Then the current flows
through the clamp capacitor. The voltage spikes caused by the
leakage inductance are depressed. As shown in Fig.6, the
voltage stress of the switch is 160V. Low on-resistance
switches can be used to reduce the conduction losses.
Fig.7 shows the current through the leakage inductance and

the current through the active switch. The current through the
switch is composed by the current of magnetizing inductor
and the reflected current of the secondary winding.
The voltage stresses of the diodes are illustrated in Fig.8. The
voltage stress of Do and Ds are lower than the output voltage.
Good performance diodes can be used to improve the
efficiency.
The current through the secondary winding, Do and Ds are
shown in Fig.9. The current marked in the loop represents the
magnetizing current of the coupled inductor.
The efficiency of the prototype at different loads is sketched
in Fig.10. The highest efficiency of the converter is 94.3%,
and the efficiency is over 93% in a wide load range.

vcc
50V/div

vds
50V/div

iDc
5A/div

Fig.9 Currents through the secondary winding, Do and Ds






















2us/div
Fig.6 Performance of the clamp circuit

Fig.10 Efficiency of the proposed converter

5 Conclusions

Fig.7 Currents of the leakage inductance and the switch

A novel boost converter with a coupled inductor and a

switched capacitor for high step-up applications is presented
in this paper. The voltage gain is extended greatly and the
voltage stresses of the active switch and the output diode are
depressed significantly. The reverse-recovery problem is
overcome due to the leakage inductance, which is also helpful
to solve the EMI problem. Meanwhile, the problems caused
by the leakage inductance are solved by the clamp circuit. All
these feathers improve the efficiency effectively. The
experimental results show that the proposed converter is a
competitive candidate in high step-up and high efficiency
applications.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank National Semiconductor
Corporation for the great support on this research and many
others.

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