Power Loss Analysis for Efficiency Estimation of a DC-DC Converter

Careful inspection of efficiency in a DC-DC converter and its dependence on different parameters have been key concerns for power electronic specialists for a long time ago. Although extensive research has been done on the estimation of power loss for different components in a DC-DC converter separately, there isn't any comprehensive study regarding power loss analysis in a DC-DC converter. In this research, detailed description and necessary considerations in order to analyze the power loss of all components in a Push-Pull DC-DC converter are presented. Push-Pull topology is the best choice for investigating efficiency issues, since it exhibits all different types of power loss that are usually encountered in DC-DC converters. This research proposes and verifies appropriate power loss models for all components in a DC-DC converter that dissipate power. For this purpose, conduction and switching loss models of all the relevant components are fully developed. The related equations are implemented in MATLAB environment to simulate all possible causes of power loss in the converter. In order to provide a test bed for evaluation of the proposed loss models and the converter efficiency, a 50W Push-Pull DC-DC converter was designed and implemented. The experimental results are in full accordance with the simulation results in different input voltages, load conditions and switching frequencies. It was finally shown that the proposed models accurately estimate the DC-DC converter's efficiency.