The Sepic converter dc analysis is presented, showing why this is a popular converter. Beware of the ac characteristics though.
Introduction
In the last article, we talked about the simplest of all converters, the buck converter, and showed how its control transfer functions could be extraordinarily complex. In this issue, we’ll go to the other end of the spectrum, and look at a converter that is far more complex, yet is often used by engineers who are unaware of the difficulties they may be in for.
Call this article, if you like, part II of “Power Supplies are Supposed to be Easy!”
The Sepic Converter
The most basic converter that we looked at last month is the buck converter. It is so named because it always steps down, or bucks, the input voltage. The output of the converter is given by
Interchange the input and the output of the buck converter, and you get the second basic converter – the boost. The boost always steps up, hence its name. The output voltage is always higher than the input voltage, and is given by:
What if you have an application where you need to both step up and step down sometimes, depending on the input and output voltage? Well, you could use two cascaded converters, one a buck and one a boost. Unfortunately that needs two separate controllers and switches. (It’s actually a good solution in many cases, and should not be rejected out of hand.)
The buck-boost converter has the desired step up and step down functions
but the output is inverted. A flyback converter (isolated buck-boost) requires a transformer instead of just an inductor, adding to the complexity of the development.
One converter that provides the needed input-to-output gain is the Sepic converter (single-ended primary inductor converter). This is shown in Fig. 1. It has become popular in recent years in battery-powered systems which must step up or down depending upon the charge level of the battery.
Figure 1: The Sepic converter can both step up and step down the input voltage, while maintaining the same polarity and the same ground reference for the input and output.
Fig. 2 shows the circuit when the power switch is turned on. The first inductor, L1, is charged from the input voltage source during this time. The second inductor takes energy from the first capacitor, and the output capacitor is left to provide the load current. The fact that both L1and L2 are disconnected from the load when the switch is on leads to complex control characteristics, as we will see later.
