1. Introduction
Due to people’s eternal pursuit of a deeper and more accurate understanding of the objective world, the concept of fractional calculus and its applications have been continuously concerned in multi-disciplinary fields in recent decades [
1]. An increasing body of evidence shows that the mathematical laws related to fractional calculus widely exist, while objectives or phenomena with non-integer order characteristics have been revealed one after another, the epidemic spread of diseases, the flow of traffic, the cryptocurrencies’ price dynamics, and the parameter variation law of electrochemical components, to name but a few [
2,
3,
4].
By reviewing the key works in related fields, one can find that research on linear, continuous, and commensurate systems is relatively common, and the most widely used models are some first or second order transfer functions, or in the form of linear fractional-order differential equations, since a wide variety of practical systems can be approximated by them, and they are easy to be analyzed for engineering applications [
5]. However, there are still a wide range of objects in the real world that do not operate in continuous and linear ways, for instance, those nonlinear cases. As a result, some powerful tools developed for linear, and continuous cases would not be that effective. Therefore, it is necessary to study the correlation analysis methods in combination with the actual systems embodying these features.
Technically, switched-capacitor power regulators, a class of typical switching power regulators, are piecewise-smooth circuit systems due to the on and off actions of power semiconductor switching devices, such as power diodes, power metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs), and etc. Lumped parameter models and integer-order linear differential equations are used to describe their performance during each switching state, and switching functions similar to step functions are usually used to "stitch" the equations belonging to two adjacent switching states. Therefore, the model of these systems usually has breakpoints, and performs in the piecewise linear form. In order to reveal the power loss mechanism of these circuit systems, the three approaches based on equivalent impedance, simplified circuit models, and state-space models are attractive and widely applied in design-oriented works, such as those in [
6] to [
15]. For instance, the concepts of the low-frequency output impedance ROUT, slow-switching limit (SSL) impedance
, and fasts witching limit (FSL) impedance
are proposed in thesis [
6], and they can be used to guide the parameter design and optimization of loss components, especially for capacitors and power switches. Another example is the idea of simplified charging- and discharging-unit base approach, which is developed in literature [
8]. By this approach, the power losses in switching-on and switching-off dynamic processes can be revealed from the equivalent unit circuit perspective. By the state-space model approach, more detailed dynamic performance of SCCs can be analyzed, while nonuniform component choices and some non-ideal deviations can be included [
16].
Generally, in the analysis process of the above three approaches, the initial value problem (IVP) of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) appears frequently, and both numerical and analytical methods have been developed. The works involved in these three approaches provide some cornerstone concepts and valuable engineering insights, but these approaches are born with the defect in accuracy. Specifically, the SSL impedance and the FSL impedance only exact for operation in their own asymptotes [
6]. Besides, the parameter of all components is usually assumed constant [
15]. But it is widely accepted that device parameters will drift with working conditions in practice, which may set off chain reactions in both the equivalent resistance parameter and the conductivity loss. As those discussed in [
17] to [
19], components such as capacitors usually experience parameter variations, which can shift the operating point of converters and affect the efficiency of SCCs. Therefore, it is worthwhile to develop more precise and reliable methods to address the aforementioned concerns.
In recent decades, exploring the characteristics of electronic components arouses ever-increasing attention in circuit theory and application fields [
20], and a rich source of evidence suggests that the characteristics of electronic components can be more effectively captured by using the concepts of fractional calculus compared to classical calculus-based models, and factional-order impedance (or constant phase elements, CPEs) based models have been widely adopted to describe the characteristics of electronic components, such as inductors, ultracapacitors (UCs), lithium batteries, power MOSFETs, and non-solid electrolytic capacitors [
21,
22,
23].
In view of this, this paper proposed and verifies the assumption that the commonly used class-2 ceramic capacitors have an uniform fractional-order variation trend in their capacitance and equivalent series resistance (ESR). Then, by introducing the calculating and analysis methods of fractional calculus, the equivalent piecewise-smooth fractional-order model and efficiency analysis method are developed for SCCs, by which two breakthroughs can be achieved:
By introducing the fractional-order modeling technique, this work bridges the gap between micro characteristics of capacitors and macro characteristics of SCCs.
By employing the fractional-order analysis method, the impact of parameter drift of capacitors on the power loss of SCCs can be characterized in more accurate way.
In order to present the above achievements in detail, the rest of this paper is organized as follows:
Section 2 builds up the unified fractional-order equivalent impedance model of class-2 X7R capacitors, and identifies their parameters, on the basis of which typical Dickson type SCCs are modeled by piecewise-smooth FO.
Section 3 discusses and summarizes the efficiency of SCCs. In
Section 4, experiments and simulations are performed for verification. Finally,
Section 5 concludes this letter.
3. Efficiency Analysis of SCCS Based on FO Model
Per the previous discussion in literature [
26] and [
27], the fractional Adams-Bashforth-Moulton-type method (F-ABM) and Grunwald-Letnikov (G-L) definition based method are preferred to solve the initial value problem of fractional-order piecewise smooth circuit systems. Thus in this work, F-ABM is exploited to obtain the solutions for equations (1) to (8), and the solutions of charging and discharging state are collected end to end in each switching period by the stroboscopic map technique. Then one can calculate the efficiency, and the efficiency
of an SCC at charging stage can be governed by:
From Equation (
10) , it can be seen that there is a parameter drift phenomenon in
as described in
Section 2, while
and
are related to the results of fractional differential equations, which are also affected by capacitor parameters such as
and
. As a result, the parameters of the capacitor have an effect on the efficiency of the converter in the charging phase.
As to the discharge period, the efficiency can be divided into the charge redistribution phase and the loading phase, and they can be governed by the following:
3.1. Charge Redistribution Phase
Flying capacitors transfer charge to both bypass capacitors and the load resistor until bypass capacitors are fully charged, we have:
where
is the duration of this stage,
and
are the voltage of flying capacitors and the voltage of bypass capacitors at the end of this phase:
is the overall loss of the discharging path, then the charge redistribution phase efficiency of an SCC can be expressed as:
3.2. Loading Phase
Flying capacitors and bypass capacitors discharge to load at the same time, we have:
where
,
,
is the total discharging time. Then the loading phase efficiency of an SCC can be expressed by:
Because in steady state, the energy is balanced on the flying capacitor, that is,
, therefore, the efficiency of an SCC during the full switching cycle can be expressed as:
Then one can calculate the efficiency by introducing the solutions of fractional differential equations (1) to (8). By varying the order
, one can obtained the following
Figure 7. It can be seen that, the order
has effects on both the flying capacitor voltage and the output voltage, which can proffer an explanation from the perspective of equivalent resistance and capacitance variations.
4. Validation and Discussion
To validate the analysis in
Section 3, experiments are considered in this section, in which a 2:1 Dickson SCC and a 3:1 Dickson SCC are built. In experiments, a source of
is adopted, and a set of type GS61008T GaN HEMTs are employed to reduce the influences of the parasitic parameters of power switches. The switching frequency of the converters under tests are set to be
, and the duty ratio is set to be
. The type of power diodes used in experiments is ES2B. A glimpse of the experiment scene is as
Figure 8.
Experimental waveforms under load
are as
Figure 9, and the required voltage data for efficiency calculation are compared in
Table 1.
The comparison shows that the order
affects both the average voltage and the voltage ripple, which are related to the efficiency calculation of SCCs. Experiment results are closer to the calculation/simulation results based on FO model. To further validate, a comparison of test results with a wide load range is conducted and the results are as
Figure 10.
As can be seen, because the fractional-order characteristics of capacitors are included in the circuit system model, the efficiency analysis results obtained by the fractional-order based approach are more closer to measurements than those of the traditional integer-order model.
Figure 1.
Distribution of capacitance and impedance at .
Figure 1.
Distribution of capacitance and impedance at .
Figure 2.
Distribution of capacitance and resistance in to .
Figure 2.
Distribution of capacitance and resistance in to .
Figure 3.
Fractional-order equivalent impedance model of X7R capacitors.
Figure 3.
Fractional-order equivalent impedance model of X7R capacitors.
Figure 4.
Capacitor parameter trends in testing frequency range.
Figure 4.
Capacitor parameter trends in testing frequency range.
Figure 5.
Topologies of Dickson type step-down SCCs: (a) N(2n)-X, (b) N(2n+1)-X.
Figure 5.
Topologies of Dickson type step-down SCCs: (a) N(2n)-X, (b) N(2n+1)-X.
Figure 6.
Equivalent topology in different switching states: (a) charging process in N(2n)-X, (b) charging process in N(2n+1)-X, (c) discharging process in N(2n)-X, (d) discharging process in N(2n+1)-X.
Figure 6.
Equivalent topology in different switching states: (a) charging process in N(2n)-X, (b) charging process in N(2n+1)-X, (c) discharging process in N(2n)-X, (d) discharging process in N(2n+1)-X.
Figure 7.
Comparison of calculation and simulation: (a) flying capacitor voltage (2:1 Dickson), (b) steady-state voltage ripple of flying capacitor (2:1 Dickson), (c) output voltage (2:1 Dickson), (d) output voltage ripple (2:1 Dickson), (e) voltage of flying capacitor 1 (3:1 Dickson), (f) steady-state voltage ripple of flying capacitor 1 (3:1 Dickson), (g) voltage of flying capacitor 2 (3:1 Dickson), (h) steady-state voltage ripple of flying capacitor 2 (3:1 Dickson), (i) output voltage (3:1 Dickson), (j) output voltage ripple (3:1 Dickson).
Figure 7.
Comparison of calculation and simulation: (a) flying capacitor voltage (2:1 Dickson), (b) steady-state voltage ripple of flying capacitor (2:1 Dickson), (c) output voltage (2:1 Dickson), (d) output voltage ripple (2:1 Dickson), (e) voltage of flying capacitor 1 (3:1 Dickson), (f) steady-state voltage ripple of flying capacitor 1 (3:1 Dickson), (g) voltage of flying capacitor 2 (3:1 Dickson), (h) steady-state voltage ripple of flying capacitor 2 (3:1 Dickson), (i) output voltage (3:1 Dickson), (j) output voltage ripple (3:1 Dickson).
Figure 8.
Experiment scene.
Figure 8.
Experiment scene.
Figure 9.
Experiment waveforms: (a) steady-state output voltage (2:1 Dickson), (b) steady-state output voltage ripple (2:1 Dickson), (c) steady-state output voltage (3:1 Dickson), (d) steady-state output voltage ripple (3:1 Dickson).
Figure 9.
Experiment waveforms: (a) steady-state output voltage (2:1 Dickson), (b) steady-state output voltage ripple (2:1 Dickson), (c) steady-state output voltage (3:1 Dickson), (d) steady-state output voltage ripple (3:1 Dickson).
Figure 10.
Comparison of power efficiency of a 2:1 Dickson Type SCC.
Figure 10.
Comparison of power efficiency of a 2:1 Dickson Type SCC.
Table 1.
Comparison of simulation and experimental results.
Table 1.
Comparison of simulation and experimental results.
Test cases |
Voltage (V) |
|
|
|
|
|
Simulation 2:1 () |
30.05 |
29.98 |
29.38 |
29.38 |
2:1 () |
30.06 |
29.96 |
29.37 |
29.37 |
2:1 () |
30.08 |
29.91 |
29.36 |
29.36 |
Experiment 2:1 |
30.12 |
29.92 |
29.22 |
29.22 |
Simulation 3:1 () |
40.11 |
40.08 |
19.61 |
19.58 |
3:1 () |
40.13 |
40.04 |
19.64 |
19.48 |
3:1 () |
40.17 |
39.86 |
19.71 |
19.37 |
Experiment 3:1 |
40.20 |
39.97 |
19.94 |
19.42 |