ABSTRACT
This chapter describes insight into the design and development of the most commonly used direct current (DC) -DC converters. It presents DC-DC converter basics, a summary of converter control information, common topologies with necessary design equations including isolated converters, supplemental circuits such as gate drivers and protection circuits, practical considerations in converter design, and other essential converter development details. As pulse width modulation (PWM) of the power switch is used to control the power through the DC-DC converter, its efficiency is less dependent on the voltage difference from input to output, allowing operation with a wider input voltage range and higher efficiencies. High-frequency switching of a power semiconductor device utilizing PWM is the core of DC-DC converters. There are many types of DC-DC converters including buck or step-down, boost or step-up, buck-boost, flyback, Cuk, Sepic, resonant types, and inverter-driven types: push-pull, half-bridge, and full-bridge.
