Optimized size design of a low cost automotive on-board power supply

The converter design for automotive applications is a challenge, because requirements like low size, weight and costs are at odd with requirements like high efficiency. The objective of this paper is to find a size and cost optimized design for an automotive on-board power supply. The investigated topology is a push-pull half-bridge converter with current doubler, where the discrete as well as the magnetically integrated current doubler will be taken into account and compared to each other. Therefore total filter size was calculated dependent on the operation frequency in order to find the most appropriate tradeoff between converter size and losses. Additionally the converter efficiency of an assembled prototype was measured for different semiconductor configurations to evaluate the suitability of different semiconductor technologies.