An Asymmetric Half-Bridge Resonant Converter Having a Reduced Conduction Loss for DC/DC Power Applications with a Wide Range of Low Input Voltage

A new asymmetric half-bridge (HB) resonant converter for dc/dc power system with a wide range of low input voltage is proposed in this paper. The proposed converter is easily derived based on the switch integration technique, merging a buck-boost, which is the same with the active-clamp forward's primary circuit, and the HB LLC resonant converter. By adopting the buck-boost circuit in front of the HB LLC resonant converter, higher input voltage of LLC resonant converter stage can be achieved. As a result, the primary conduction loss can be significantly reduced. In addition, to cover wide input voltage range, an asymmetric pulse width modulation control is applied. It can mitigate the design limitation for a high efficiency. Moreover, the proposed converter can achieve not only the small conduction loss and the optimal design for high efficiency, but also high power density and low cost due to the switch integration technique. The validity of the proposed converter is confirmed by the experimental results of a prototype converter with 36-72 V_DC input and 300 W (12 V/25 A) output.