Coordinate Sizing and Control of the Onboard Pulse Power Supply System

Onboard pulse power load features a high peak-to-average ratio, which would significantly impact the stable operation of the power supply system (PSS). Specifically, the supply voltage may reduce dramatically and eventually trigger system protection, thus sacrificing reliability. One effective way to address this issue is to connect an active capacitor, which is defined as a capacitor with a bidirectional dc/dc converter, to the power supply's output. However, as the active capacitor is usually used to accommodate all the pulsed load with the conventional control schemes, the power supply's specific power would be limited due to the less optimized system's volume, making its implementation constrained. In this article, a coordinate sizing strategy is first proposed. The system's volume is minimized by using the battery to supply a portion of the pulsed load. Afterward, a simple pulsed current reference generation method is proposed for the active capacitor. The pulse power tracking performance is further improved. A prototype of a pulse PSS with 2.7-kW constant power and 30-kW peak power is designed in the lab. The experimental results verify the validity of the proposed method.