Research on the Energy Supply and Control Coordination Method of Drive Circuit in Pulse-Step-Modulation High-Voltage Power Supply

The pulse-step-modulation (PSM) power supply is a high-voltage power with multi-modules in-series output, mainly applied to devices such as accelerators and microwave generators. At present, the PSM power supply has three major problems: slow dynamic response speed, numerous control optical fibers, and a complex power supply circuit for the module unit. These problems result in a complex electrical structure and a large volume. To address these issues, this paper proposes an LLC resonant converter which provides DC voltage to the main circuit of each module. A method is adopted to synthesize the power source and the control signal into a unit signal in the module drive circuit. The synthesized signal is transmitted through a high-voltage cable by a circuit in a coordinated manner. Finally, the receiving circuit separates the synthesized signal into DC source and the module control signal. In this paper, a prototype with 15 level modules is fabricated, and a complete design is presented. The test data is provided for the case where the repetition frequency reaches up to 33 kHz, and the equipment outputs stepped triangular, quasi-rectangular, and modulated waveforms with a variable rise time. This method can be extended to cascaded multilevel converter and Marx generator.