A flexible power electronic converter system with rapid control prototyping for research and teaching

A flexible power electronic converter embedding a rapid control prototyping platform suit-able to be applied in research test setups and teaching laboratories is proposed and described in this paper. The electronic system is composed of three subsystems, namely, i) three half-bridge power boards, ii) a dc-link capacitor bank with a half-bridge power module for active dc-link control, iii) an interfacing board, called motherboard, to couple the power modules with a control unit, iv) a digital control unit with rapid control proto-typing functionalities for controlling power electronic circuits. Power modules integrate sensors with related conditioning circuits, driving circuits for power switches, and protec-tion circuits. Conversion circuits exploit GaN electronic switches for optimal performance. The architecture and implementation of the system are described in detail in this manu-script. Main applications are in the implementation of conversion circuits for supplying arbitrary ac or dc voltages or currents, testing of new control algorithms for power elec-tronic converters, testing of systems of electronic converters in, for example, smart nano-grids or renewable energy applications, training of undergraduate and graduate students. & COPY; 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).