Review on General Architecture and Selection of Multiple Input Converters

DC-DC converters are the major power electronics interface units that are being widely used in diverse fields. With the increase in demand for renewable energy sources, the demand for converters that integrate these sources led to the transformation to multiple input converters (MICs) from single input converters (SICs) to in the recent past. MICs penetrated into several applications ranging from millivolt to kilovolts and milliwatt to megawatt for effective and efficient integration of sources with different voltage-current characteristics. With the advent increase in MIC topologies, it becomes quite challenging and confusing to select one with desired specifications for a specific application. Depending on the characteristics, MICs have been categorized and each of them possesses both advantages and limitations. The general categorization and comprehensive review based on the characteristics of MIC have been presented in this paper. The idea of the paper is to present a clear picture, general rules and framework of MIC topology for selection with respect to the application. Further, the advantages and limitations of few recently proposed MIC topologies, followed by the selection for different applications are discussed.