Novel and Simple Calorimetric Methods for Quantifying Losses in Magnetic Core and GaN Transistor in a High Frequency Boost Converter

In design and implementation of a boost converter,information on loss characteristics of switching devices and magnetic materials is a prerequisite,especially in high frequency applications.To gather such information,testing and accurate loss quantification is needed.Previous methods for measuring magnetic core loss are either only suitable for sinusoidal wave excitations or cannot separate winding loss from inductor loss.In addition,existing loss measurement approaches on the newly introduced GaN transistors are not satisfactory.In this paper,we present a new method to distinguish winding loss from inductor loss under practical excitations.This method utilizes a converter to generate the actual excitation waveforms and uses a calorimetric setup to quantify the losses.By splitting up the inductor in a converter into an air-core inductor and a magnetic-core inductor,both equipped with exactly the same winding structure,the air-core inductor loss can be used as the reference of the magnetic-core inductor winding loss.In this way,losses in the magnetic core can be determined in the actual operating condition of a converter in which the inductor is to be used.Moreover,a simple calorimetric approach for obtaining loss information of GaN transistors are is also presented.Both methods require simple setup and are easy and convenient to execute.The methods work well in assessing different high frequency magnetic core materials and measuring losses in GaN transistors at 1MHz.