A Novel Automated Design Methodology for Power Electronics Converters

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. Are there difficulties in assembling the device from some of the cells?
2. Line #268, [59] might be removed.
3. Line #326, the complete words about ISOP, IPOS, IPOP, and ISOS might be given.

Author Response

Thank you for your time dedicated reviewing our article. We appreciate your efforts.

We answered each of your remarks on the following list:

1. Yes, this methodology has been studied and tested for many years. References 22 and 23 present more details on how the standard cells are assembled. Specially on this publication we did not bring much information on mechanical/electrical assembly difficulties because we wanted to focus on the statistical modeling and virtual prototyping aspects.
2. Corrected
3. In line #128 we presented the first time these acronyms.

Reviewer 2 Report

The work is very interesting and certainly it is technically sound. Although the innovations/novelty in measurement techniques and in electronics is rather low, it is the standardization of the proposed approach that determines the scientific value of the manuscript, which is high. In this sense, the only concern is, if this work is within the scope of the specific journal.

Author Response

Thank you for your time dedicated reviewing our article. We appreciate your efforts.

Indeed, the scientific value of the paper lies on the description of the design method, standardization and virtual prototyping, not on measurements or electronics itself.

I see that the topic of the journal is on multilevel converters. Despite we are not exploring the levels of series connected modules in our paper, every PCA has series connected modules and multilevel modulation strategies could be applied.

Reviewer 3 Report

The work done is interesting, but I believe that it contains some shortcomings that must be addressed. Here are my comments:

Line 134: In the description in Figure 1, what is represented by the drawing on the right and the one on the left should be added. Although it is described between lines 128 and 131, I recommend including it in the description of the figure as well.

Line 151: When analysing the traditional flow diagram of power converter design, it would be convenient to add a stage, always present in the design, of simulation of the system behaviour.

Line 189: Figure 1, is wrongly numbered should be Figure 2.

Line 205: The acronym TP is used, for Technology Platform, however it is not defined above.

Line 208: “Since all this process is only able to select, interconnections and assemble standardized cells, built to be interconnected and assembled, there is no custom design carried out. The resulting PCA converter is already optimal”. It would be useful to clarify why PCA is optimal.

Line 268: The bibliographical reference [59] appears, but it does not exist.

Line 256: What is the PCA scheme used to carry out these experimental tests? It would be convenient to define the Conversion Standard Cell (CSC) topology. Although in [25] it is not clear which ones are used.

Line 391: Since the main objective of the work is to establish a Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) model, capable of predicting the efficiency and temperature of an APC. It would be very interesting to analyse this model in the publication and how it has been applied to predict efficiency and temperature.

Line 418: Editing problem on the x-axis "Output Current/CSC [A]" in the "GPR Rational Quadratic" and "GPR Squared Exponential" graphs.

Line 437: Different text sizes in Figure 12.

Line 439: Although the text in figure 12 indicates that the y-axis is "The y-axis units are points of efficiency" this aspect should be clarified.

Line 443: Check the numbering of the figure: "With the results displayed in Figure 8.... “

Line 502: An invalid biblical reference appears [71].

Line 540: The conclusions section should not only describe what has been dealt with in each section as is done in lines 548 to 569. It should present what was sought in the research and the subtractions obtained based on the experiments carried out. It would also be interesting to describe possible future lines of work located in the research. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your time.

The answers to your questions and propositions are presented in the attached file.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The reviewed paper is interesting and could be published after minor revision.

The Authors described novel automated design methodology for power converters. The paper is well organized, but some important information is omitted. In the revised version of this paper the Authors should:

1. include any schematic diagram of standard cells,
2. shown schematic diagram of the power converters for which the tests were performed,
3. give analytical equations used in the proposed methodology,
4. revise Table 2, in which rows 1 and 2 are repeated,
5. read carefully the article and correct some typos and repetitions (see pages 2, 5, 14).

Author Response

Thank you for your time dedicated reviewing our article. We appreciate your efforts.

We answered each of your remarks on the following list:

 

1. include any schematic diagram of standard cells,

We added information about the topology on the text in section 4 and an image of the schematics (figure 5)

1. shown schematic diagram of the power converters for which the tests were performed,

We referenced in the text the schematic of the topology (figure 5)

1. give analytical equations used in the proposed methodology,

In order to analyze how the GPR model works we would have to introduce several subjects that are not very familiar to the power electronics community such as Bayes Theorem, Bayesian Inference and the kernel method. It would require at least 2 pages to achieve a minimal comprehensive description.

We propose adding a few more references where the mathematical analysis is clear, and any reader can have comprehensible information how to get from a set of input data to a prediction.

1. revise Table 2, in which rows 1 and 2 are repeated,

We corrected

1. read carefully the article and correct some typos and repetitions (see pages 2, 5, 14).

Yes, thank you for the remark, we made a more careful review.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

acceptable for publication.

Reviewer 3 Report

I think the way in which the suggestions for improvement have been dealt with is correct.