Practical Design Issues For PFC Circuits
Practical Design Issues For PFC Circuits
-
Abstract Many difficult design issues are faced by
designers trying to optimize the performance of boost PFC
circuits. This paper addresses common design challenges and
provides analytical techniques for developing practical
solutions. The issues covered include line filtering, loop
compensation alternatives, input voltage feedforward,
protection circuits, and synchronization.
I. INTRODUCTION
52
damping of the input filter will prevent its output impedance larger than necessary. Near zero crossings, the current
from interacting with the PFC converter’s input impedance drawn from the line is mainly limited by the current slewing
[6, 7, 81. The key is to keep the output impedance of the in the inductor.
input filter much lower than the input impedance of the
converter. E. Duty Cycle Limitations
53
a distorted waveform will normally still be well below the good references exist on voltage loop compensation
requirement. This is especially true of distortion around the[10,12,13]. There are some trade-offs inherent in the voltage
zero crossings, due to the fact that the energy at the zero loop design that are particular to PFC applications. The
fundamental requirement of power balance on the line
crossings is relatively low compared to the rest of the period.
frequency time scale within the PFC circuit requires that the
Although it is true that discontinuities in the waveform cause
high order harmonics, these harmonics can be low energy. voltage loop’s bandwidth must be less than the line
The waveform in Fig. 3 was created and analyzed using frequency (actually less than 1/2 the line frequency). If not,
MATHCAD, and the THD calculated. This is relatively the voltage loop will distort the line current in order to
easily done by using the relationship between power factor regulate the output voltage. This creates a trade-off between
and THD. Average and apparent power can be calculated by power factor and transient response.
multiplying the current waveform with a pure sinusoidal Since the loop bandwidth is low to begin with, it is
voltage waveform. Average power (P) is the instantaneous normally advised to avoid integral Compensation due to the
further reduction in transient response that the relatively
product of the voltage and current averaged over a line cycle,
while apparent power (VA) is the product of the RMS large feedback capacitor will cause. The large feedback
current and voltages. Power factor (PF) is given by the ratiocapacitor required for integral compensation will limit the
PNA. THD can be related to PF by [ 1 11: slew rate of the error amplifier. This is especially
troublesome at start up when the poor transient response can
cause a large overvoltage condition. The dc regulation of the
(4) output voltage is proportional to the loop gain. With the
voltage loop gain set relatively low, the output voltage will
vary widely with line and load. Since the load of a PFC
An alternate approach is to actually calculate the Fourier
circuit is typically another converter, dc regulation is
coefficients of the waveform and the THD by:
normally not an issue, and start up transient response can be
more of a concern (due to the voltage stress on the output
capacitors).
54
transient response. Since the loop has such poor bandwidth, switching cycle depends on the status of the switches Q1 and
any improvement is welcome. Q2 and is shown in Fig. 5 . It can be seen that the greatest
ripple current cancellation is achieved when the overlap of
Previous design criteria for the voltage loop stressed Q1 off-time and Q2 on-time is maximized. For an arbitrary
reduction of the 120Hz ripple component being fed back to waveform shown in Fig. 5, the capacitor current RMS value
the multiplier [lo]. This is due to the fact that the ripple at is given by:
the output of the voltage error amplifier is a major
contributor to 3rd order harmonics in the line current.
However, in some cases some increased 3rd order harmonic
distortion can be tolerated and traded-off for improvements
in transient response. Alternatively, even if 3rd order
harmonic reduction is the main criteria, improvements in
transient response can be achieved when using integral where iACis the input inductor current at a given instant in
compensation. For example, one alternative is to first select the line cycle (and can be assumed to be constant for a
the frequency to cross-over the voltage loop (10 - 15Hz) and switching cycle), IL is the reflected output inductor current,
place the zero of the compensation network at that T, is the switching period and tl,t2,t3,t4 are as shown in Fig.
frequency. This will give 45" of phase margin. The second 5.
pole frequency can then be placed either at lOOHz plus, if
3rd order harmonic reduction is adequate, or slightly lower From (6), it is clear that IC-RMSis minimized when tl and
to further attenuate the 120Hz ripple. The lower the pole is t3 are maximized relative to t2 and t4. One method of
placed, the greater the 120Hz attenuation, and the lower the achieving this is to synchronize the turn-on of the boost
phase margin, this will tend to speed up the transient diode (Dl) with the turn-on of 42. If D1 conducts longer
response while increasing the overshoot. Another alternative than Q2, t4 is eliminated and if Q2 conducts longer than D 1 ,
is lo have the cross over frequency symmetrically between t2 is eliminated. This approach implies that the boost
the pole and zero frequencies. Keeping the distance about converter's leading edge is pulse width modulated while the
6:l is a good trade-off between 120Hz attenuation, and forward converter is modulated with traditional trailing edge
transient response. This method can give a little better PWM. To see the effect of ripple reduction achieved in a
transient response for the same attenuation. The point is you PFC circuit, (6) can be extended to cover half a line cycle
can trade off response using similar techniques as typically with instantaneous values of iAC and tl-t4 computed as the
used when designing voltage loops, with the added input voltage varies. IL and the duty cycle of Q2, D(Q2), can
specification being 3rd order harmonic reduction. be assumed to be constant for all practical purposes. The
results of such computations for a 200W power system with
IV. SYNCHRONIZATION
St14+tz++t3+t4 3-
For a power system where the PFC boost converter is
followed by a DC-DC converter stage, there are benefits to
synchronizing the two converters. In addition to the usual
advantages such as noise reduction and stability, proper
42 j
synchronization can significantly reduce the ripple currents
in the boost circuit's output capacitor. Fig. 4 helps illustrate
the impact of proper synchronization by showing a PFC
boost converter together with simplified input stage of a . .
55
TABLE 1. EFFECTS ON BWST CAPACITOR
OF SYNCHROMZA~ON CURRENT a proportional representation of input voltage and is given by
I Vin= 85V I Vin = 1 2 0 ~ I Vin= 240V 1
nm?\
"\Y'I
I
II -
01/02
~
DUO2
1
I 0-~
1/02 D1/02
I
I 0-1 / 0-2 Dl102 I
0.35 I 1.491A 0.835A I 1.341A 0.663A I 1.024A 0.731A (7)
0.45 I 1,432A 0.93A I 1.276A 0.664A I 0.897A 0.614A
a VBsT of 385V are summarized in Table I. The table
compares the IC-RMSfor Dl/Q2 synchronization as described During the next half cycle, Vcms is converted into a digital
above vs. the same for the other extreme of synchronizing word and processed further. Crms is then discharged to be
the turn-ons of Q1 and Q2 . ready for integration of the input voltage again for the next
cycle. Thus, the dynamic response of this scheme is much
Table I illustrates that the boost capacitor ripple current improved (60 Hz bandwidth vs. 10 Hz typical for the 2-pole
can be reduced by about 50% at nominal line and about 30% LPF). It also minimizes the ripple current (ideally to zero)
at high line with the synchronization scheme described because of the digital sampling scheme. This novel scheme
above. The output capacitance value can be significantly lends itself well to integration in a logic-dense BCDMOS
reduced if the ripple current is limited or the capacitor life process and is incorporated in some of the recently
can be increased as a result. In cost sensitive designs where introduced PFC controllers[ 151. The improved feedforward
hold-up time is not critical, this is a significant advantage. performance can be translated into both higher voltage loop
bandwidth and lower input current THD.
An alternative method of synchronization to achieve the
same ripple reduction is to synchronize the turn-on of Q1 to
the turn-off of 42. While this method yields almost identical VI. PROTECTION
CIRCUITS
ripple reduction and maintains trailing edge modulation on
both converters, the synchronization is much more difficult The boost topology used in PFC circuits presents a unique
to achieve and the circuit can become susceptible to noise as problem for protecting the circuit components during start-
the synchronizing edge itself is being modulated. up. The combination of large output capacitance and a
relatively small (high frequency) input inductor presents a
very low impedance path during start-up. This path can not
V. INPUT
VOLTAGE
FEEDFORWARD be interrupted by turning the boost switch off. A high
current surge can lead to saturation of the boost inductor and
Input RMS voltage sensing and feedforward is performed damage the high speed diode. A common practice is to put a
in many PFC circuits in order to achieve a constant loop gain bypass.diode from input to output which acts only during
over varying input voltages and to provide input voltage start-up and input voltage transients.
correction to the line current. The average value of the
rectified AC input is computed by low pass filtering (LPF) The inrush situation can be complicated if the boost
and then squared before being used as a divider term in switch is allowed to turn on during start-up. A peak current
deriving the current programming signal as shown in Fig. 1. limiting circuit which directly shuts off the switch (without
Voltage feedforward results i n voltage loop bandwidth relying on the average current loop) when a preset threshold
optimization and a constant power limiting function by is crossed is essential. The average loop does not help
making the output of the voltage error amplifier proportional
to the output power [10,161.
56
during start-up because the feedback capacitor needs time to
charge before the loop is effective. In essence, this is a large
signal phenomenon and the effectiveness of the average
current loop to control currents during small perturbations is
irrelevant.
57
The multiplier limit levels can also be exploited to achieve ACKNOWLEDGMENT
power scaling when a line voltage brown out occurs. In
many commercially available PFC controllers (e.g. The authors would like to thank John O’Connor of
3854A/B), the multiplier output current (IMo) is limited to a Unitrode for his helpful discussions on the practical aspects
fixed multiple of IAC. If the multiplier is set-up so that IMOis of PFC circuit design. We would also like to thank Laszlo
close to this limit at low line full load operating point, the Balogh of Unitrode for his helpful suggestions.
IMo will hit the above mentioned limit under brownout
conditions[ 161. Below that voltage, the input current
REFERENCES
(programmed by 1 ~ 0 )will be proportional to the input
voltage and the power drawn from the line will fall at a [I] L. H. Dixon, “Average Current Mode Control of Switching
quadratic rate. This behavior helps recover fast from the Power Supplies,” Unitrode Power Supply Design Seminar Manual
brownout situation as less power is drawn. SEM700,1990
[2] W. Tang, R.B. Ridley, and F.C. Lee, “Small Signal Modeling
of Average Current-Mode Control,” IEEE APEC, February 1992
VII. BIASCIRCUITS [3] R.. Red1 and A. Kislovski, “Source Impedance and Current-
Control Loop Interaction in High Frequency Power-Factor
In order to power the control circuitry, the PFC converter Correctors”, APEC 1992
needs a low voltage bias supply. Typically an additional [4] C.M. Hoff and S. Mulukutla, “Analysis of the Instability of
PFC Power Supplies with Various AC Sources”. APElC, March
winding on the input inductor, along with a full-wave 1992
rectifier achieves this objective as shown in Fig. 8 [17]. The [5] R.D. Middlebrook, “Input Filter Considerations in Design and
full-wave rectification provides an effective summing of the Application of Switching Regulators,” IEEE Industry Applications
inductor voltages during switch on (Vin) and off (Vo-Vin) 1976
periods so that the filtered voltage is constant (aVo). A [6] M. Nave, Power Line Filter Design for Switched-Mode Power
trickle-charge resistor from the input is used to charge the Suppeies, (Van Nostrand Reinhold)
bias capacitor before the switching begins. [7] R.D. Middlebrook, “Design Techniques for Preventing Input
Filter Oscillations,”Proceedings PowerCon 5, 1978
For system optimization, there are two possible avenues. If [8] V. Vlatkovic’, D. Borojevic’, and F.C. Lee, “Input Filter
Design for Power Factor Correction Circuits,” International
the follow-on converter is kept off until the boost voltage has Conference on Industrial Electronics, Control and Instrumentation,
reached a certain level, the load on the PFC stage is November 1993
minimized and prevents starting hiccups in the bias circuit. [9] C. Zhou and M.M. Jovanovic’, “Design Trade-offs in
On the other hand, from a cost standpoint, the bias winding Continuous Current-Mode Controlled Boost Power Factor
on the input inductor of the PFC circuit can be eliminated if Correction Circuit” High Frequency Power Conversion Conference
the bootstrap winding on the follow-on converter is used as a May1992
bias supply for both stages. This means that the bias [lo] L. H. Dixon, “High Power Factor Preregulators for Off-Line
capacitance has to be large enough to supply switching Power Supplies,”Unitrode Power Supply Design Seminar Manual
energy for both stages until the second stage is functional. SEM600, 1988
[11]J.G. Kassakian, M.F. Schlect, G.C. Verghese, Principles of
The under-voltage lockout levels of the two controllers must
Power Electronics, (Addison-Wesley, 1991)
be similar for this scheme to work. Low start-up and [12] J.B. Williams “Design of Feedback Loop in Unity Power
operating currents on the PWM controllers (as available with Factor AC to DC Converters,” PESC 1989
the BiCMOS and DMOS ICs) can help this situation. [I31 R.B. Ridely, “Average Small Signal Modeling of the Boost
Power Factor Correction Circuit”, VPEC Seminar Proceedings
September I989
VIII. SUMMARY [14] A. Abramovitch and S. Ben-Yaakov, “Analysis and Design of
the Feedback and Feedforward Paths of Active Power Factor
Some of the more common issues involving PFC circuits Correction Systems for Minimum Input Current Distortion,” PESC
have been discussed. Factors contributing to line current 1995
distortion and loop design have been identified. In addition, 1151 R.A. Mammano, “New Developments in High Power Factor
practical design trade-offs involved in synchronizing Circuit Topologies,” Power Systems World”96 September 1996
[ 161 L. Balogh, Unitrode-UC3854AE3 and UC3855AA3 Provide
converters, providing over stress protection and biasing have
Power Limiting with Sinusoidal Input Current for PFC Front
been identified. Where possible, solutions to these issues Ends,” Design Note DN-66, Unitrode Corporation
have been suggested. [I71 W. Andreycak, “Optimizing Performance in UC3854 Power
Factor Correction Applications Design Note DN-39E, Unitrode
”
Corporation
58