High Efficiency Power Converter

Abstract

A power converter nearly losslessly delivers energy and recovers energy from capacitors associated with controlled rectifiers in a secondary winding circuit, each controlled rectifier having a parallel uncontrolled rectifier. First and second primary switches in series with first and second primary windings, respectively, are turned on for a fixed duty cycle, each for approximately one half of the switching cycle. Switched transition times are short relative to the on-state and off-state times of the controlled rectifiers. The control inputs to the controlled rectifiers are cross-coupled from opposite secondary transformer windings.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A DC/DC power converter comprising:
 a nonisolating switching regulator having a regulator output; and   a nonregulating isolating converter receiving the regulator output and providing an isolating converter output, the nonregulating isolating converter comprising:
 a primary transformer winding circuit having at least one primary winding; and 
 a secondary transformer winding circuit having at least one secondary winding coupled to the at least one primary winding and having plural controlled rectifiers, each having a parallel uncontrolled rectifier; 
   a voltage sensor sensing a sensed voltage on the primary side of the power converter;   a current sensor sensing a sensed current on the primary side of the power converter; and   control of the regulator output based on both the sensed voltage and the sensed current.