Software Controller for Balancing of Current Distribution in Interleaved Converters

A parallelism is a well known technique for increasing the power rating of power electronics converters. Interleaved converters use a kind of parallelism that, thanks to their own particular features, makes it possible more accurately map the converter's output current (or voltage) in a reference signal. However, interleaved converters present several disadvantageous. The most important problem consists in the fact that, converter's output current may not be distributed equally in individual converter's channels, what requires additional hardware support mechanism. In contrast to these methods, the cost effective, software only based solution of the controller for balancing of current distribution, is proposed in this work. The controller constitutes part of a control system of broad-band power electronics current source (VCCS) for ATE (Automated Test Equipment). This work presents basics of operation of the proposed controller as well as the investigation results of the simulation model of the VCCS.