Rahul K. Iyer, S. Tahmid Mahbub, and Robert C.N. Pilawa-Podgurski have won the Best Student Paper Award at the 2024 IEEE International Communications Energy Conference (INTELEC) for their paper “Quasi- Two-Level Switching for Active Balancing of Flying Capacitor Multilevel Converters Under Light-Load Conditions” (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10678933/)
Recent work in the Pilawa group has highlighted the design of “active-balancing” controllers to ensure the safe operation of high-performance Flying Capacitor Multilevel (FCML) converters during system transients. This work builds on broader efforts to study the converter dynamics and design stable high-bandwidth controllers. In particular, this work highlights techniques to ensure stable converter operation when the load current is small. Compared to prior work relying on Phase-Shifted Pulse-Width Modulation, the proposed switching scheme enables active balancing at average load currents approaching and equal to zero. The conference paper and oral presentation given at IEEE INTELEC 2024 highlight the proposed switching and control methods and showcase the practical implementation of the controller on industry-standard digital signal processor hardware.
They are continuing to work on additional characterization of the balancing controller at different operating conditions, and aim to apply the proposed technique to demonstrate safe startup of the converter at light-load conditions.