Enhanced DAB for Efficiency Preservation using Adjustable-Tap High-Frequency Transformer

Efficient DC-DC power-conversion with wide-span voltage-regulation is crucial to a sustainable and robust power electronics system. Dual-active-bridge (DAB) offers straight-forward regulation and its transformer enables voltage step-up/down required for many applications, such as battery chargers and bus converters for DC distribution systems. However, losing soft-switching at light loads or when operating at voltage gains far from the turns ratio severely degrades the efficiency of DAB, especially at high switching frequencies. In this work, we demonstrate an enhanced DAB (E-DAB) topology which employs an adjustable-tap transformer to extend the soft-switching over wider voltage gains and increase the power-transfer capability. By a proper tap adjustment and with single phase-shift modulation, the proposed GaN-based converter achieved a peak efficiency of 97.4% with an overall efficiency greater than a conventional DAB for voltage gains of up to 2.8 times higher. Employing a quasi-planar matrix transformer with integrated leakage inductance at 300 kHz allowed for an extremely high power density of 10 kW/l (7.5 kW/l with cooling). The tapped transformer did not incur extra losses to the topology. The gain versus power-transfer characteristic for soft-switching operation was derived for the E-DAB and its improvement in efficiency was experimentally verified over a wide power range.