1948 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 28, NO. 4, APRIL 2013
Fig. 4. Different operation configurations. (a) Configuration 1. (b) Configura-
tion 2. (c) Configuration 3. (d) Configuration 4.
structure will change to half-bridge structure, which will fur-
ther double the dc gain. In summary, there are four operation
configurations in this proposed topology illustrated as follows.
Configuration 1: As shown in Fig. 4(a), transformer T2is
disabled by turning ON the bidirectional switch and rectifier 2
is blocked. In this case, the converter operates as a conventional
LLC converter.
Configuration 2: As shown in Fig. 4(b), the bidirectional
switch is OFF and two transformers operate in series at the
primary side and in parallel at the secondary side. In this manner,
the total magnetizing inductance is the sum of two transformers’
magnetizing inductance, L
m 1
+L
m 2
.
Configuration 3: As shown in Fig. 4(c), the full bridge is
changed to half-bridge operation by switching OFF S3 and keep-
ing S4 always ON. Meanwhile, transformer T2 is disabled by the
bidirectional switch. In this manner, the dc gain will be halved
compared to that in Configuration 1.
Configuration 4: As shown in Fig. 4(d), the converter operates
in half bridge and transformer 2 is enabled by turning OFF the
bidirectional switch. Similar to Configuration 3, the dc gain is
half of that in Configuration 2.
III. DC G
AIN ANALYSIS
A. Current DC Gain Analysis
Obtaining the accurate dc gain will help guiding the design
of LLC converters. However, as the characteristics of LLC con-
verters are complicated by the nonlinear relationship between
output voltage with excitations (input voltage and switching
frequency) and load, obtaining a mathematical expression of
the accurate dc gain becomes almost impossible. To simplify
the analysis of the characteristics of LLC converters, FHA has
been developed, where the voltages and currents are assumed
to be sinusoidal waveforms, thereby permitting the traditional
ac circuit analysis to be employed, and thus the approximated
dc gain in mathematical expression can be easily derived [15].
However, the inaccuracy in dc gain of the FHA technique may
mislead the design, since the dc gain in FHA is much lower than
that in real circuits, especially when the switching frequency
deviates far away from the resonant point. It clearly indicates
that the design based on FHA leads to setting the magnetizing
inductance lower than necessary to meet the desired dc gain
range, thus resulting in higher magnetizing current and higher
conduction losses. Although there are several other techniques,
such as describing function, Fourier series expansion, etc., to
improve the dc gain accuracy [16]–[25], they still cannot give
an accurate dc gain due to some approximations assumed in
these techniques. In an efficiency-oriented design, an accurate
dc gain is necessary in choosing the right magnetizing induc-
tance to reduce the magnetizing current while meeting the dc
gain range.
B. Numerical DC Gain Calculation
It is straightforward to obtain accurate dc gain character-
istics by using simulation tools, such as Pspice, Saber, and
Psim. However, applying this method to a recursive optimization