Search Results (25)

Chopper and capacitively coupled techniques are employed in instrumentation amplifiers to create capacitively coupled chopper instrumentation amplifiers (CCIAs) that obtain a high noise power efficiency. However, the CCIA has some disadvantages due to the chopper technique, namely chopper ripple and a low input impedance. The amplifier can easily saturate due to the chopper ripple of the CCIA, especially in extremely low noise problems. Therefore, ripple attenuation is required when designing CCIAs. To record biomedical information, a CCIA with a low power consumption and a low noise, low output ripple, and high input impedance (Z_in) is presented in this paper. By introducing a ripple attenuation loop (RAL) including the chopping offset amplifier and a low pass filter, the chopping ripple can be reduced to 0.36 mV. To increase the Z_in of the CCIA up to 1.8 GΩ, an impedance boost loop (IBL) is added. By using 180 nm CMOS technology, the 0.123 mm² CCIA consumes 1.87 µW at a supply voltage of 1 V. According to the simulation results using Cadance, the proposed CCIA architecture achieves a noise floor of 136 nV/√Hz, an input-referred noise (IRN) of 2.16 µV_rms, a closed-loop gain of 40 dB, a power supply rejection ratio (PSRR) of 108.6 dB, and a common-mode rejection ratio (CMRR) of 118.7 dB. The proposed CCIA is a helpful method for monitoring neural potentials. Full article

To minimize the recharge time of EVs, Level 3 charging stations utilizing DC fast charging systems have become increasingly prevalent. Additionally, these systems offer bidirectional functionality, aiding in stabilizing the DC grid during peak hour. As a result, the DC–DC converters utilized in such systems must be capable of bidirectional energy transfer. Among existing typologies, DAB converters are preferred due to their simplicity and sustainability. The three-phase DAB (DAB3) is favored because the output ripple is lower compared to the single-phase structure. This characteristic assists in mitigating the negative effects on the battery caused by high-frequency current ripple. However, the input to DAB3 converters typically originates from AC–DC stages, leading to the inclusion of low harmonic frequency ripples (e.g., multiples of 360 Hz). These ripples are then transferred to the battery, increasing its temperature. To address this issue, this paper proposes a technique to mitigate negative effects by attenuating these low frequencies in the charging current. Simulations were conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique. Scaled-down experiments utilizing a DAB3 prototype were conducted to corroborate the simulations. The findings demonstrated a reduction in ripple from 8.66% to below 2.67% when compared to the original controller. This reduction enabled the solution to meet the limiting current ripple criteria outlined in the CHAdeMO standard. Full article

As the current mainstream high-precision ADC architecture, sigma-delta ADC is extensively employed in a wide range of domains and applications. This paper presents the design of a highly efficient cascaded digital decimation filter for sigma-delta ADCs, emphasizing the suppression of high folding band noise and the achievement of a flat passband. Additionally, this study addresses the critical balance between filter performance and power consumption. An inserting zero (IZ) filter is incorporated into a cascaded integrator comb (CIC) filter to enhance aliasing suppression. The IZ filter and compensation filter are optimized using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to achieve greater noise attenuation and smaller passband ripple. The designed filter achieves a noise attenuation of 93.4 dB in the folding band and exhibits an overall passband ripple of 0.0477 dB within a bandwidth of 20 KHz. To decrease the power consumption in the filter design, polyphase decomposition has been applied. The filter structure is implemented on an FPGA, processing a 5-bit stream from a 64-times oversampling rate and third-order sigma-delta modulator. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the output signal reaches 91.7 dB. For ASIC design, the filter utilizes 180 nm CMOS technology with a power consumption of 0.217 mW and occupies a layout area of 0.72 mm². The post-layout simulation result indicates that the SNR remains at 91.7 dB. Full article

Torque fluctuations in drivetrains are the result of dynamic excitations and can be unfavorable for the lifetime of the system. Passive ripple suppression methods exist, such as torsional dampers and flywheels, which are often bulky and not always desired. Alternatively, performant active control methods exist; however, their applicability to certain drivetrains is not covered. Therefore, this paper focuses on active control from a mechanical perspective, more specifically, drivetrain dynamics impacting active control effectiveness. A quasi-resonant controller is implemented as an active control method, and its performance and robustness are proven both in simulation on a 3-DOF mechanical model and experimentally at different excitation frequencies. The tests show that active control effectiveness is highly drivetrain-dependent. In particular, the propagation of the torque oscillation is influenced by the elastic filtering properties of the drivetrain, and the speed ripple depends on the inertial attenuation of the drivetrain. High-stiffness, low-inertia drivetrains benefit best from active control for ripple suppression because the inertial attenuation is limited, while high-stiffness elements increase the mechanical bandwidth before dynamic decoupling happens between the inertias of interest. Active control serves as a viable alternative for speed ripple reduction when drivetrain compactness is key, instead of the current passive solutions. Full article

Compared with isolated converters, transformerless converters are a preferred choice in low-voltage grids due to their efficiency and lower cost. However, leakage current and common mode (CM) voltage appear through the converter and ground in hybrid grids, which consist of AC and DC subgrids. The leakage current and CM voltage seriously influence operation and power quality in low-voltage distribution systems. This paper proposes a common-ground-type (CGT) converter equipped with a CM decoupling control strategy to eliminate the leakage current and CM voltage. A CM model is derived, and the leakage current and CM voltage are analyzed in detail. A CGT four-leg converter is constructed to eliminate the high frequency CM voltage. A dual DQ current control loop is developed to suppress the DC double-frequency ripple. Additionally, an active damping method is proposed, based on the neutral current feed-forward plus inductor current feedback, to attenuate the low frequency CM voltage. The proposed converter and control strategy guarantees excellent performance in suppressing leakage current and CM voltage. The DC voltage of the converter connected to the DC grid maintains stability and symmetry. The leakage current is significantly reduced, and the leakage current suppression performance is improved by 83%. The high frequency CM voltage is attenuated from 50%u_dc to 2%u_dc, and the low frequency CM voltage is suppressed from approximately 32%u_dc to 3%u_dc, which is a significant improvement compared with the traditional method. In addition, the proposed control strategy has good transient performance when the load changes abruptly. Finally, an experimental platform is established to validate the feasibility and performance. The experiment results showed that the proposed control strategy improves the system performance and power quality. Full article

Positive displacement pumps produce pressure ripple that can be reduced with the attenuation of the generated flow ripple. This paper presents the application of a gas bladder hydraulic damper with the aim of reducing the oscillations of the delivery flow rate of positive displacement machines. This work is focused on the development of a 1D fluid dynamic model of the damper, which is based on the fundamental fluid motion equations applied for a mono-dimensional flow. In order to represent the fluid flow inside the damper, a particular evaluation of the sound speed has been implemented. Experimental tests have been performed involving an axial piston pump with the damper installed in the delivery pipe to validate the model; tests were carried out at different pump working conditions and with different gas precharge pressure of the damper. The test results confirmed the effectiveness of the device, and the comparison with numerical results demonstrated a good agreement. Simulations have been carried out to investigate the influence of various parameters on damper effectiveness. Full article

In this paper, a low-power and low-noise capacitive-coupled chopper instrumentation amplifier (CCIA) is proposed for biopotential sensing applications. A chopping technique is applied to mitigate the domination of flicker noise at low frequency. A new offset cancellation loop is also used to deal with the intrinsic offset, originating from process variation, to reduce ripple noise at the output of CCIA. Moreover, the optimization of the chip area was resolved by adding a T-network capacitor in the negative feedback loop. The CCIA is designed on 0.18 µm process CMOS technology with a total chip area of 0.09 mm². The post-simulation results show that the proposed architecture can attenuate the output ripple up to 41 dB with a closed-loop gain of 40 dB and up to 800 Hz of bandwidth. The integrated input referred noise (IRN) of the CCIA is 1.8 µV_rms over a bandwidth of 200 Hz. A noise efficiency factor (NEF) of 5.4 is obtained with a total power dissipation of 1.2 µW and a supply voltage of 1 V, corresponding to a power efficiency factor of 9.7 that is comparable with that of state-of-the-art studies. Full article

In order to improve the charging speed and reduce the occupied volume of an electric vehicle charger, a single-phase boost power factor corrector (PFC) system with cascade CHB (cascaded H-bridge) topology was adopted. Due to the periodic fluctuation of single-phase AC input, there is a large double power frequency ripple component in the output voltage of an AC-DC converter. When capacitor voltage is used as output for feedback control, the control system has the characteristics of a non-minimum phase system. In light of these factors that affect the dynamic stability of the system, a control method is proposed to improve the dynamic characteristics of the system without affecting its steady-state performance. The predictive PI control strategy was adopted to predict the error input signal of the lag process to attenuate the jitter in the control system and improve the dynamic performance and anti-interference of the system. Finally, the feasibility of the scheme was verified by experiments. Full article

The goal of this study was to figure out how to regulate an induction motor in a hybrid electric vehicle. Conventional combined vector and direct control induction motors take advantage of the advantages of vector control and direct torque control. It is also a method that avoids some of the difficulties in implementing both of the two control methods. However, for this method of control, the statoric current has a great wealth of harmonic components which, unfortunately, results in a strong undulation of the torque regardless of the region speed. To solve this problem, a five-level neutral point clamped inverter was used. Through multilevel inverter operation, the voltage is closer to the sine wave. The speed and torque are then successfully controlled with a lower level of ripple in the torque response which improves system performance. The analysis of this study was verified with simulation in the MATLAB/Simulink interface. The simulation results demonstrate the high performance of this control strategy. Full article

The analysis presented in this paper is focused on the harmonics distortion damping in the case of bidirectional power-flow of the electronics device—matrix converter as an interface between two power sources. Bidirectional energy flow takes place in the matrix converter that is used in renewables, hybrid transformers, microgrids, etc. It is observed that the matrix converter generates sinusoidal voltage with some amount of harmonic distortion and worsens in the quality of power in the utility grid. Taking into account the bi-directional energy flow and the matrix converter operation principle, four key requirements for the filters are formulated. Six theoretically possible filter topologies are investigated for compliance with these requirements. Two of the filter topologies are recognized as complying with these requirements and applicable for the switching ripple harmonics damping in the utility grid connected matrix converter in the case of bidirectional power flow. The suitability of these topologies was verified by MATLAB/Simulink simulation. Using the proper filter topology will significantly reduce the size, weight and cost of the components of the filter, as well as the utility grid’s pollution by switching ripple harmonics. It is appropriate to apply such filters to matrix converters that operate in wind turbines installed in doubly fed induction generators. These filters should also be used in hybrid transformers and other high-power devices with matrix converters. Full article

Finite control set model predictive torque control (FCS-MPTC) strategy has been widely used in induction motor (IM) control due to its fast response characteristic. Although the dynamics of the FCS-MPTC method are highly commended, its steady-state performance—ripple deserves attention in the meantime. To improve the steady-state performance of the IM drives, this paper proposes an improved FCS-MPTC strategy, based on a novel fuzzy adaptive speed controller and an adaptive weighting factor, tuning strategy to reduce the speed, torque and flux ripples caused by different factors. Firstly, a discrete predicting plant model (PPM) with a new flux observer is established, laying the ground for achieving an FCS-MPTC algorithm accurately. Secondly, after analyzing the essential factors in establishing a fuzzy adaptive PI controller, with high ripple suppression capacity, an improved three-dimensional controller is designed. Simultaneously, the implementation procedures of the fuzzy adaptive PI controller-based FCS-MPTC are presented. Considering that a weighting factor must be employed in the cost function of an FCS-MPTC method, system ripples increase if the value of the weighting factor is inappropriate. Then, on that basis, a novel fuzzy adaptive theory-based weighting factor tuning strategy is proposed, with the real-time torque and flux performance balanced. Finally, both simulation and hardware-in-loop (HIL) test are conducted on a 1.1 kW IM drive to verify the proposed ripple reduction algorithms. Full article

Interleaved power factor correction (PFC) is widely used circuit topology due to good efficiency and power density for single-switch boost PFC. As the differential mode (DM) electromagnetic interference (EMI) noise magnitude depends upon the input current ripple, this research details a comprehensive study of DM EMI filter design for interleaved boost PFC with the aim of minimizing the component size. It is also demonstrated that the different numbers of interleaved stages and switching frequency influence the filter attenuation requirement and, thus, the EMI filter size. First, an analytical model is derived on the basis of the Norton equivalent circuit model for the differential mode noises of interleaved boost PFC within the frequency range of 9–500 kHz. The derived model can help identify the proper phase shifting among the interleaved boost converters in order to minimize the considered differential mode noises at the filter design frequency. So, a novel phase-shift method is developed to get a minimized attenuation required by a filter in Band B. Further, a volume optimization of the required DM filter was introduced based on the calculated filter attenuation and volumetric component parameters. Based on the obtained results, unconventional and conventional phase shifts have demonstrated a good performance in decreasing the EMI filter volume in Band B and Band A, respectively. A 2-kW interleaved PFC case study is presented to verify the theoretical analyses and the impact of phase-shifting on EMI filter size. Full article

In recent years, multi-phase permanent magnet synchronous generators (PMSGs) have become attractive in the field of tidal current energy conversion systems (TCECS) due to their high-power density, reliability, and availability. However, external disturbances and malfunctions in power conversion chains will bring challenges to achieving stable and continuous tidal current energy harnessing. Using generalized proportional integral observers, an active fault-tolerant control (AFTC) strategy is therefore proposed for a five-phase PMSG based TCECS that is subjected to an open switch fault (OSF) in the generator side converter. This proposed AFTC strategy is applied into q-axis current control loops, which contain fault detection and compensation. The fault compensator will be smoothly activated using a sigmoid function once the OSF is detected. Finally, a small-scale power experimental platform emulating the TCECS is established in order to verify the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed FTC strategy. Experiment results show that this AFTC strategy can detect faults rapidly and effectively attenuate torque ripples in the post-fault operation mode. Full article

Hydraulic pulsation attenuators (HPA) are commonly used to suppress the noise and vibration in fluid power systems. However, most existing HPAs lack a reasonable optimization strategy and effective methods to improve the performance of HPAs. This paper proposes an adaptive particle swarm optimization (APSO) algorithm to speed up the geometry optimization process of a resonant string-based compound HPA (RSHPA), which was proposed in our previous work. Then, the study discusses the possibility of improving the performance of RSHPA by varying the configuration and location of the RSHPA. The experiment result validates the feasibility of the proposed optimization method for RSHPA. Full article

The role of wave breaking in microwave backscattering from the sea surface is a problem of great importance for the development of theories and methods on ocean remote sensing, in particular for oil spill remote sensing. Recently it has been shown that microwave radar return is determined by both Bragg and non-Bragg (non-polarized) scattering mechanisms and some evidence has been given that the latter is associated with wave breaking, in particular, with strong breaking such as spilling or plunging. However, our understanding of mechanisms of the action of strong wave breaking on small-scale wind waves (ripples) and thus on the radar return is still insufficient. In this paper an effect of suppression of radar backscattering after strong wave breaking has been revealed experimentally and has been attributed to the wind ripple suppression due to turbulence generated by strong wave breaking. The experiments were carried out in a wind wave tank where a frequency modulated wave train of intense meter-decimeter-scale surface waves was generated by a mechanical wave maker. The wave train was compressed according to the gravity wave dispersion relation (“dispersive focusing”) into a short-wave packet at a given distance from the wave maker. Strong wave breaking with wave crest overturning (spilling) occurred for one or two highest waves in the packet. Short decimeter-centimeter-scale wind waves were generated at gentle winds, simultaneously with the long breaking waves. A Ka-band scatterometer was used to study microwave backscattering from the surface waves in the tank. The scatterometer looking at the area of wave breaking was mounted over the tank at a height of about 1 m above the mean water level, the incidence angle of the microwave radiation was about 50 degrees. It has been obtained that the radar return in the presence of short wind waves is characterized by the radar Doppler spectrum with a peak roughly centered in the vicinity of Bragg wave frequencies. The radar return was strongly enhanced in a wide frequency range of the radar Doppler spectrum when a packet of long breaking waves arrived at the area irradiated by the radar. After the passage of breaking waves, the radar return strongly dropped and then slowly recovered to the initial level. Measurements of velocities in the upper water layer have confirmed that the attenuation of radar backscattering after wave breaking is due to suppression of short wind waves by turbulence generated in the breaking zone. A physical analysis of the effect has been presented.
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