Reducing the inductor size and current stress by interleaved bidirectional boost rectifiers used for power factor correction

Bidirectional boost rectifiers are widely employed in high power factor correction (PFC). Besides the half-bridge boost rectifier (HBR), and bipolar voltage (BVM) and unipolar voltage (UVM) modes of operation with the full-bridge boost rectifier (FBR), this paper investigates the case in which one leg of the FBR operates at the line frequency while the other one is modulated at higher frequency (clamped unipolar voltage mode, CUVM). In addition this paper proposes two interleaved boost rectifiers, one in a HBR version and the other in a FBR version. These topologies alleviate the current stress and inductor size problems present in the both HBR and FBR. Besides the theoretical analysis of the proposed topologies the paper presents a quantitative study of the inductor size and input current ripple reduction when compared to the basic HBR and FBR topologies. The IFBR reduces of 50% the inductor size, the semiconductor current stress, and the switching losses with respect to the UVM option as applied to FBR Also, the IHBR topology reduces the inductor size to less than 25% and the semiconductor current stress to 50% when compared to the basic HBR. The two proposed topologies are suitable for high power applications. Simulated and experimental results confirm the theoretical analysis.