Efficiency Analysis of Two DC-DC Universal Converters for Electric Vehicles: Single-Phase Paralleled GaN and Two-Phase SiC-GaN-Based

DC-DC universal converter is an integrated converter for battery charging and power management in boost/buck drive/plug-in operations of plug-in electric vehicles. SiC and GaN devices are attractive to be used in universal converter. To cope with low power rating of GaN, two solutions are presented in this paper: two-phase SiC-GaN-based and single-phase paralleled GaN. Then, an instantaneous power loss analysis method is introduced in order to investigate power loss contributors. Applying the instantaneous method on OrCAD Spice simulation samples shows the superiority of the paralleled GaN converter in the term of efficiency.