Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2011 (2011), Article ID 458083, 19 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2011/458083
Research Article

Optimization of DC-DC Converters via Geometric Programming

Department of Electronics, Electrical and Automatic Engineering, University Rovira i Virgili, 43007 Tarragona, Spain

Received 13 April 2011; Accepted 13 July 2011

Academic Editor: Maria do Rosário de Pinho

Copyright © 2011 U. Ribes-Mallada et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The paper presents a new methodology for optimizing the design of DC-DC converters. The magnitudes that we take into account are efficiency, ripples, bandwidth, and RHP zero placement. We apply a geometric programming approach, because the variables are positives and the constraints can be expressed in a posynomial form. This approach has all the advantages of convex optimization. We apply the proposed methodology to a boost converter. The paper also describes the optimum designs of a buck converter and a synchronous buck converter, and the method can be easily extended to other converters. The last example allows us to compare the efficiency and bandwidth between these optimal-designed topologies.