Design and implementation of a novel zero-current switching method for low-power DC-DC converters

This paper introduces a unique zero-current switching (ZCS) technique for low-power dc-dc converters. In this paper, a single-inductor dual-input triple-output converter is considered to apply this new technique, which can be generalized for converters with more inputs and outputs and high-power and energy-harvesting applications. The first input of this converter can be connected to any source that can produce energy, such as photovoltaic (PV) cells or thermoelectric generator (TEG), and the second input can be considered a battery. The proposed converter is implemented discretely, and a low-power microcontroller whose power consumption is reduced by the software is employed to control the whole system. In the proposed ZCS method, the current sensor is not used, and only a simple voltage level detector is employed to detect the inductor voltage level in order to determine the optimal value of the inductor discharge duty cycle. This converter works in discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) and uses pulse width modulation (PWM) and the time-multiplexing strategy (TMS). The main focus of this paper is on designing and implementing a digital control algorithm based on this new ZCS technique in order to increase efficiency.