Developing Compact High-Bandwidth Transducer for Contactless Switch-Current Sensing in Emerging Grid-Tied Wide-Bandgap High-Power Converters

In many applications, wide bandgap power converters are replacing old-fashioned power converters, including aerospace, transportation, smart grid, etc., where their sensing systems require higher bandwidths for diagnostics, prognostics, and control compared with conventional power electronics. Considering the layout of WGB power converters, speed is not the only factor to take into account when determining the size and invasiveness of current sensors. Existing commercial current sensors lack many of the characteristics required by power converters, including size, speed, noise immunity, accuracy, linearity, high capacity, isolation, and non-invasiveness. Due to the size and cost of current probes, these converters cannot accommodate them as well. Hence, a precise, noise-immune light-size, non-invasive ultrafast sensor would be ideal for such applications in power converters. In this paper, we provide feasible guidelines to design current sensors that can be suitable candidates to be applied to high-power WBG converters with desirable characteristics, utilizing new PCB-integrable methods and technologies. A final set of experiments will be conducted to evaluate their potential for such sensitive integrations.