Distributed Control and Communication System for PEBB-based Modular Power Converters

Numerous power electronics building blocks (PEBB) based power conversion systems have been developed to explore modular design, scalable voltage and current ratings, low-cost operation, etc. This paper further extends the modular concept from the power stage to the control system. The demands of tight synchronization and low latency make the communication networks more critical for a distributed control architecture in high-switching-frequency modular power converters. The developed distributed communication network has achieved 25 ns synchronization jitter and 40 Mbps communication frequency for a four-node network at 120 kHz control frequency, which is experimentally validated on a SiC-based modular power converters.