We aim to design advanced application specific switch-mode power supplies that can handle the highly dynamic loads we encounter in the developing digital world.
High Efficiency DC-DC Converters
The proliferation of new technologies with complex energy demands has sparked interest in new power management circuits. Server farms, AI chips, PV systems, and energy harvesting for IoT systems span powers from microwatts to megawatts and have unique challenges in terms of sources, loads, and dynamics. The group focuses on developing novel DC-DC converter topologies which are designed for these specific applications. By leveraging hybrid power transfer, partial power processing, modular circuit structures, and switch-capacitor circuits, highly specialized converters can be constructed to address industrial and commercial challenges. Reducing stress on both active and passive components is leveraged to reduce both volume and losses simultaneously and produce a more effective solution than conventional circuits.
Multi-Objective Optimization of SMPS
Power Electronics is a high-dimensional, multi-objective problem with significant constraints involving thermals, volume, cost, and efficiency. Often switching frequency, ripples, or components are pre-selected to make design easier, but this significantly limits what the final solution can look like. The focus of this group is to use advanced modeling and optimization techniques to develop analytical solutions to these design problems. Thousands of components and design variables can be selected from within seconds, creating a set of Pareto optimal solutions which can be compared directly, without having to arbitrarily select design variables.
The end result is a fully explored design space with a guarantee for optimality and the ability for designs to visualize design trade-offs directly amongst different topologies, components, and modulation schemes.
Digital and Mixed-Signal Control
Control of state-variables of power electronics affects not only the dynamic response of SMPS to varying loads, but also the physical construction and constraints of the system. Using advanced FPGA and microcontroller systems, digital control is embedded into SMPS systems to enable non-linear control methods to vastly improve dynamic response and reduce the size of output capacitors. By combining analog signal processing with digital control, the leverages the advantages of both domains to reduce latency and decrease voltage deviation.
In this way, we develop smarter power electronics tuned to the smart electronics they are designed to power - AI, computers, smart phones, communication systems, renewable energy systems. By bringing the dynamics of the power supply closer to the dynamics of the loads they are designed to regulate, smaller, more efficient and cheaper solutions are achieved.
EMI-focused design
The aim is to replace intuition-driven, build-then-fix EMC with EMC-focused design: predictive models of conducted and radiated noise using Ansys/COMSOL simulations, geometric programming to choose topology, layout and switching, plus targeted control strategies, and validating results on prototypes using LISN and pre-compliance chamber measurements.
