A Family of Fully Balanced and Vertically Stacked Multilevel Power Converters with Linear Scaling

This paper presents methods of practically implementing capacitive power transfer schemes for the stacked capacitor Manhattan Configuration multilevel topology. The Manhattan Configuration is a multilevel topological framework with linear component quantity and stress scaling to N-levels. It is composed of a center stack of capacitors where each capacitor defines a single level of the converter. The functionality of the converter is controlled through the movement of power between capacitors in the center stack. It is shown that the amount of power that needs to be moved between these capacitors to maintain voltage balance in steady state is less than the output power of the converter, denoting the differential aspect of this topological framework. Four capacitive power transfer methods are provided as well as state space equations for each that can be used for future control formulations. Each capacitive transfer method is benchmarked against each other with respect to component quantities, stresses, and transient step response settling times. Lastly, selected steady state transient high-fidelity simulations are provided.