DC-AC inverter with Heterodyne Technique and GaN power device

This paper presents a novel GaN switching power device-based DC-AC converter using Heterodyne Technique. Compared with the traditional DC/AC converters, the proposed converter has a simpler circuit topology with less number of high speed switching devices, thus making more efficient and cost-effective converter with reduced size and weight. By the aid of Heterodyne Technique, DC power is converted to the AC power by two half-bridge high frequency inverters operating at different frequency, which is directly transformed to the commercial frequency AC power through a small high frequency transformer. This means only one power conversion is necessary to obtain the commercial frequency alternating power from DC source. The basic theoretical working principle is explained and the circuit operations are confirmed by PSPICE circuit simulation. The prototype has been made to verify the validity of the proposed circuit topology.