A fault tolerant communication interface for modular and distributed power electronics

This work focuses on the design and the implementation details of a communication interface for distributed power electronic actuators. For this purpose, first the specific requirements, needed in such an area, are presented in detail. Afterwards several implementations of the hardware layer are shown and discussed regarding their characteristic in the power electronics environment. Furthermore the handling of possible transmission errors and its specific correction mechanisms is presented. Therefore typical communication errors are introduced. Their relevance will be discussed on the basis of measurements. Subsequently possible correction methods are presented and compared with respect to their implementation complexity and efficiency. Finally this paper presents the results of an experimental network and demonstrates the performance of the fault tolerant communication.