Design aspects of logic control circuits for direct frequency changers

Industrial trends towards full automation and the declining prices of power semiconductor devices have stimulated a considerable interest in the design and development of the compact “silicon-intensive” class of power converters known as Direct Frequency Changers (DFCs). It has been demonstrated that such converters have special logic-control requirements because of the complexities of associated power circuits and power conversion techniques. This paper focuses on the design aspects of logic-control circuits for DFCs. These aspects include: the derivation of the appropriate switching functions for DFCs, the processing of the DFC gating signals from their respective functions, and the development of the circuitry required to implement these functions and signal processing.