A wire based communication interface for Medium and High- Voltage converters

This work focuses on the design and the implementation details of a wire based network communication interface for modular power electronic devices. For this purpose the isolation requirements needed in such an area are presented in detail. In consequence, two implementations of the hardware layer are shown and discussed regarding their characteristics in the environment of power electronics. In order to prove the concept of distributed isolation barriers and to investigate its capability, one specific network interface was selected and implemented. The circuitry has been implemented in an existing low voltage M2C where the data rates and the Isolation distribution have been measured. Finally, this paper demonstrates the possibility to reach even the higher voltage range with low voltage communication devices. For this purpose, both the potential and the limits of this new communication approach are shown.