A New Generalized Step-Down Single-Stage AC/AC Power Converter

Most traditional AC/AC power converters suffer from power quality problems and multi-stage power conversion losses. The rectifier and inverter-based AC/AC converter topology not only increases multi-stage power conversion losses, but also increases the volume, weight, and cost, and decreases the longevity of the converter due to the DC-link capacitor, line filter and electromagnetic interference (EMI) filter. High-frequency (about 10 kHz) switching advanced pulse width modulation techniques are generally used in order to compensate the power quality problems, which increase the switching losses and introduce the EMI problems. In this paper, a new generalized step-down single-stage line-frequency switching AC/AC power converter topology is proposed. The proposed converter uses line-frequency switching, and does not require any pulse width modulation techniques. The proposed topology offers promising performances in terms of lower order harmonics, total harmonic distortion, the elimination of DC-link capacitors and EMI filters, and switching losses. The circuit was designed and simulated in a MATLAB/Simulink environment. A scaled-down laboratory prototype of the proposed topology was developed in order to validate the feasibility. The experimental and simulation results reveal the feasibility of the proposed generalized step-down single-stage converter topology, and its excellent features.