Design Considerations of Sequential Switching Shunt Regulator for High-Power Applications

Sequential switching shunt regulators (S3Rs) are widely used in the satellites owing to their simple structure and high reliability. The high-power communication satellites require a power supply with a high bus voltage and large solar array section current. However, a large solar array capacitance and new time-division multiple access operations complicate the design of a lightweight and cost-effective power supply by increasing the difficulty in dissipation and thermal control. On the basis of passive current limitation, in this article, we propose a novel shunt regulator with only one output diode and a protection strategy to achieve high efficiency, appropriate shunt current limitation, and low turn-off delay. In addition, to reduce the dissipation of an S3R cell when feeding the solar array current to the main bus and to satisfy the single point failure-free requirement, an innovative self-retriggerable diode short-circuit fault detector circuit is proposed, which includes a protection switch for a safe thermal or electrical operation. Finally, simulation and experimental results are presented to validate the proposed shunt regulator and the corresponding control method or protection strategy.