A Noninvasive Online Monitoring Method of Output Capacitor's C and ESR for DCM Flyback Converter

In a power electronics system, an electrolytic capacitor (E-Cap) is widely used, whose performance degradation can be reflected by the change of capacitance (C) and equivalent series resistance (ESR). This paper proposes a new online C and ESR monitoring scheme for the output electrolytic capacitor in a discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) flyback converter. The mathematical relationship between the instantaneous capacitor voltage and other parameters is analyzed and then the scheme of undetermined coefficients based on the multiple-spot sampling and least square method is further proposed. In addition, considering the particularity of high ripple current and the resultant voltage ripple variation range, especially with the temperature, an inverse ripple voltage isolation amplifier with variable amplification factor and negative voltage elimination is put forward so as to make digital signal processor identify the temperature change easily. The proposed scheme is noninvasive as only voltage signals need to be sampled and no current sensor is necessary. A prototype is built and the experiments are made to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, from which the data are in accordance with the results measured by an LCR meter.