A Reliable and Fast Response Buck Converter Based on Interleaved Converter

Power Distribution Unit (PDU) is a power supply unit that supplies various DC voltage levels for electric equipment. Reliability of PDU is very important in electrical systems. Buck converter is frequently used in PDU to provide the lower voltage levels than the source voltage level. The output capacitor of the buck converter is the main factor of failure. In this paper, we present a method to design a buck converter with almost no inductor current ripple. If the inductor current ripple is eliminated, the output capacitor can be removed from the converter. By removing the capacitor, the reliability and transient response of the converter can be improved considerably. The proposed method is based on interleaved buck converters. One of the advantages of interleaved converters is the low inductor current ripple. Theoretical analysis and simulation results are presented to justify the proposed idea.