A Battery Discharge Regulator With a Low- Output Current Ripple of an Electrical Power System in a Geostationary Satellite

The conventional Weinberg converter, owing to its high efficiency, continuous input and output current, and the soft switching of its switches and diodes, is essentially utilized in battery discharge regulators (BDR) – components that make up the overall electrical power system for geostationary satellites. However, this converter faces a crucial drawback in that the output current ripple is considerably high during the commutating operation of its output diodes. Consequently, the output root mean square (RMS) current and output voltage ripple are large. This may directly influence the lifetime and overall capacitance of the bus capacitors, ultimately affecting the longevity and size of the geostationary satellite. Therefore, reducing the BDR’s output current ripple is essential in designing a geostationary satellite’s electrical power system. As a result, this paper proposes an improved Weinberg converter to reduce the output current ripple and output voltage ripple. Specifically, the proposed converter not only has a lower output current and voltage ripples compared to the conventional converter but also reduces the magnetizing current offset of the coupled inductor. Furthermore, similar to the conventional converter, it is capable of soft switching operation of all switches and achieving high efficiency without the reverse recovery problem of diodes. Overall, the proposed converter is verified with experimental results from a 750 W-rated prototype.