An LLC converter has high efficiency and low noise and has thus recently attracted attention in the field of power supplies for use in information and communication systems. A planar transformer is thought to be particularly effective in a high-frequency switching power supply because an ideal primary-secondary interleave structure can be formed by the multilayer structure, and the alternating-current (AC) resistance can be reduced. Based on these facts, we investigated the use of planar transformers in LLC converters. However, high-frequency oscillation, which is not observed in a normal winding transformer, appears in the secondary side current, and the power supply loss is also higher. Our investigation found that the current oscillation and an increase in loss were caused by a primary-secondary capacitance of the transformer. This paper presents countermeasures used to reduce the capacitance between the primary and secondary windings, and a new layer structure for the transformer that reduces the capacitance. The loss is calculated through a simulation and experimentally, and good agreement is obtained. The proposed transformer offers the high efficiency of 98.1% in a 200 W, 12 V output power supply.

This paper presents a partially resonant active filter based on a digital PWM control circuit with a DSP that can improve the power factor and input current harmonic distortion factor of distributed power supply systems in communications buildings. The steady-state and dynamic characteristics of this active filter are analyzed experimentally and the relationship between the control variables of digital control circuit with the DSP and performance characteristics such as regulation of the output voltage, input power factor, input current harmonic distortion factor, boundaries of stabilities and transient response are defined. Using the partially resonant circuit, the efficiency is over 91%, which is 0.9 point higher than that of non-resonant circuit and the high frequency switching noise is suppressed. Furthermore, the digital control strategy with the DSP proposed in this paper can realize the superior transient response of input current and output voltage for the step change of load, the power factor over 0.99 and total harmonic distortion factor less than 1.1%.