2004 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology (ICIT)

Design and Optimization of a High Insulation Voltage

D O C Power Supply with Coreless PCB Transformer
E. Dallago, M. Passoni, G. Venchi
Power Electronics Laboratory - Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Pavia
Via Ferrata 1 - I 27100 Pavia - Italy
E-mail: enrico.dallago@unipv.it,marco.passoni@unipv.it, giuseppe .venchi@unipv.it

In this work the design and optimization of a

half-bridge converter with a coreless PCB
transformer and high insulation voltage is presented. The
analysis starts by computing coreless transformer magnetic
parameters (i.e. auto and mutual inductance of the coils)
through a simple Matlab@ function. The procedure is
applicable to both circular and rectangular spiral coils. These
results were used to model the half bridge converter, and
obtain the output V-I characteristic and the maximum output
power. Detailed experimental results on a 4W laboratory
prototype confirmed theoretical predictions.

Abstract

DClDC

2 Mutual inductance calculation

To evaluate the transformer's mutual inductance, let us
denote with i, and iz the currents of the primary and
secondary windings respectively and the energy associated
with the magnetic field with W. As well known [4], Wcan
be expressed as:

i,j=l

Keywords: power supply, coreIess PCB iransformer.

1 Introduction
Switching DC/DC power supplies with insulation voltages
in the order of tens ofkV and output powers in the order of
some Ws are required for both low and high power
applications such as: driving the gates of high power
IGBTs; supplying insulated transducers; high power
conversion and research.
In these applications, the reliability of the insulation
between input and output is determined by the power
supply transformer and a considerable amount of
transformer volume is dedicated to insulation. When a low
profile is aIso required, an interesting solution is using
planar coreless Printed Circuit Board (PCB) transformers
[ 11, where the high electrical rigidity provided by the FR4
(30 kV/mm) can offer very good insulation performance,
as well as significantly reduce manufacturing costs.
Unfortunately, designing a coreless PCB transformer is not
straightforward because on the one hand analytical models
are available only for circular windings [Z] and they are
quite complex. On the other, despite being quite effective,
finite element modeling [2] is usually not available to the
circuit designer. Furthermore, high switching frequencies
up to IO MHz are required [I], making industrial
implementation dificuIt. For these reasons a DC/DC
power supply with a coreless transformer was analyzed,
with the aim of providing a complete design procedure and
converter characterization. In Sections I1 and 111 a
nunerica1 method to calculate auto and mutual inductances
for coreless PCB transformers is presented together with
its implementation as a Matlab' function. In Section 1V the
converter is analyzed and the output characteristic together
with the maximum output power is calculated.
Experimental results presented in Section V confirm
theoretical predictions.
0-7803-8662-0104/$20.00
02004 IEEE

i,j=l

where LIZ= L d l is the mutual-inductance and L,] and L22

are the auto inductances of the primary and secondary
windings respectively. For a coreless transformer the
windings are placed in the air, so each addend in relation
(1) can be expressed as:

--

where rQrepresents the distance between dV, and d

'
,
, j i is
the current density and V, is the volume of the i-th winding
(see Fig. 1).

Fig. I : Depiction of two conductors for the evaluation of magnetic

encrgy.

As described in (21, the mutual inductance is practically

independent of trace thickness and width. For this reason,
windings can be considered as a thin wire with a negligible
cross section, and equation (2) can be approximated with a
line-integral as follows:
I

596

mutual inductance calculated using various numbers of

slices N and the measured inductance is given in Table 2
together with the computation time on a 1.3GHz personal
computer. It can be noted that above a certain number of
slices, the mutual inductance calculated is substantially
constant. This occurs when the average slice length is
Iower than the distance between coils d. For this reason, a
good compromise between time and precision of the
computation is to choose an average slice length in the
order of half the coil distance. Under this assumption, a
comparison between the measured and calculated mutual
inductances for the transformers considered is presented in
Table 3.
It can be noted that the difference between calculations and
measurements ranges fkom 2.5% to +13.4%, which is in
adequate agreement for power supply design.

Comparing (1) with (3), the mutual inductance is given by:

(4)

This integral can be solved exactly for simple geometry,

such as circular coils, but for more complicated geometries
it has to be solved numerically. Rather than using a precise
but complicated algorythm to solve the integral of equation
(4) the proposed method is based on a discretization of the
windings: each winding is subdivided into N slices and the
position of the n-th slice of the i-th winding in a Cartesian

reference (x,y,z) is denoted with Ri (n). With this notation,

the discrete formulation of equation (4) is given by:

.. . --

Relation (5) can be evaluated with the following simple

Matlab function which refers to the case of circular spiral
coils:

#3

#2
I

1.55
10

1
10
10

6
0.5
10
10

Transf. No
Rint [mml
Rext [mm]

#1

d I"[
N1
N2

10

1:

#4
3.2
15

#5

1.5

0.8
7
11

3
16

10
10

Tablc 2. Comparison bctwccn the calculatcd and mcasurcd mutual

inductance, tmnsformcr # I

f u n c c i o n [L12]=mutual(Rint.Rext,NL,NZ,d,N)

IN

IO0
Comp.time[s]i
L12calc. [nH] 302.5
L12meas. [nH]

R=linspace(Rint,Rext,N);
Ql=linspace (0,2*pi*Nl,N) ;
Q2-linspace(0,2*piiN2,N);
R1=[ (R.*cos (Ql) 1 I , (R.*sin(Ql)1 ' I ;

R2=[(R.*cos(Q2))',LR.*sin(QZ)I'];
dRl=diff (Rl); dRZ=diff ( R 2 ) ; L12=0;
for m=l:N-1,

200

306.2

average slice
length [mm]

2.2

400
4

308.0

800
16

1600
65

308.5

308.6

2.6

2.8

2.8

0.55

0.27

0.14

1
I

300

AL17%

f o r n=l:N-1,
L12=LlZtle-7*dRl ( n , : ) *dR2 (m, : ' /
sqrt (norm(R1(n, : -R2 (m,: ) , 2 ) * 2 t d A 2 ) ;
end

1.1

end

where Rint and R a t are internal and external radius, NI

and N2 are the winding turns, d is the distance between
coils, (which is equal to the PCB's thickness), and N is the
number of slices. With the proposed discretization there i s
no need to approximate the spiral winding as concentric
circles [2]. For simplicity, the coil discretization adopted
has a fixed radius and phase increment, resulting in a
variable slice length, ranging from a minimum value for
the inner coil, to a maximum value for the outer coil. To
accommodate the rectangular spiral case the definitions of
RI and R2 should be changed accordingly.
This program was used to calculate the mutual inductance
of different transformers, whose characteristics are
summarized in Table 1.Transformers from #I to #4 were
presented in [2]; transformer #5 was specifically realized
to be used in the converter presented in Section IV and was
measured with a HP 4284A Precision LCR Meter.
Considering transformer #I, a comparison between the

Table 3. Catculatcd and measurcd mutual inductance for the transformers

considered.

#I
LI2meas.rnHl 300
LlzcaIc.[nH] 307.4
2.5
A%

#4

#5

370

#3
430

I100

1056

383.8

473.8

1248

1108

3.73

10.2

13.4

4.5

#2

3 Auto inductance calculation

For a complete transformer characterization, the primary
and secondary auto inductance L , , and LzZ must be
calculated. Considering for example the primary winding
and assuming it is a thin wire, its auto inductance can be
approximated to the mutual inductance between itself and
an identical auxiliary winding placed very close to it.
Hence, the method proposed in Section II can be used,

597

setting the coil distance d to a suitable vaIue S which

should be chosen properly because both the precision of
the calculated value and the computation time are inversely
proportional to S. This behavior is shown in Table 4, where
LI1 for transformer #1 has been calculated for various
values of d
With reference to winding pitch p , a good compromise
between precision a i d computation time is &p/4, which
gives an error of 5.1% with an acceptable computation
time. Together with choice &p/4 the other transformer's
auto inductances were also calculated and the results are
reported in Table 5.

Fig. 2. Schcmc of thc powcr supply laboratory prototypc with a corclcss

PCB transfomcr.

problem of evaluating the output characteristic V,,-I,, of

the converter arises.
Even if this can be done with a circuital simulator, an
analytical formulation is usekl because it can be used
together with the function presented in the previous section
to obtain the complete design equations of the DCiDC
converter.
To evaluate the output characteristic, the winding
resistances can be neglected because they are smaller than
winding reactance at the operating fiequency. Under this
assumption the following results:

Tablc 4. Calculation ofLll for transformer# I for differcnt distances 6 .

Paramctcr p is thc winding pitch.

Jb

112

114

118

19

78

321

1302

I 21.0 I

600
11.6

-7
L

comn. time ~s11 5

meas. [ ~ H J
ALII%
34.2
~~1

5.1

-0.3

Tablc 5, Calculation of the auto inductance of the transformers

considered.

TransfNO

Winding

L;; mes
nH

1,2or3
4

1or2
1,2

600
1450

1850

L;i cal
[nH]
569.4
1568

1923

VI = L,,

A%

3.9

dt

L,,

di
v2 =L,++L,,L

dt

5.1
8.1

di,
-+

di,
-

dt

di
dt

where V I and v2 are the primary and secondary voltages

respectively. Under no-load conditions, i2=0 and v2 is equal
to:
-42
v2 -VI

It can be noted that the emor is always well below 10%.

Compared to mutual inductance calculation, the error is
lower because the thin wirle assumption introduces a
positive error [2]. However, the auto inductance expressed
in terms of mutual inductance introduces a negative error,
so the errors tend to compensate each other. Obviously
other choices for 6 are possible; in any case the distance 6
adopted has to be lower than d.

4 1

(7)

Since v I is equal to V J 2 or -Yjd2, the no-load secondary

voltage results:

and the rectified output voltage VOresults:

Converter analysis

The proposed converter, shown in Fig. 2, has a half bridge

topology which can operate under ZVT conditions to
ensure low switching losses even at a high switching
frequency (1 3.
The half-bridge is driven at a 50% duty cycle, while the
switching fiequency J is higher than the series resouance
frequency between the transformer and capacitance C5 . In
other words, the voltage across capacitance C5 is constant
and equal to Vi,,/2. Hence, the power supply is tolerant to
large switching frequency variations.
Given the magnetic parameters of the transformer, the

where V, is the rectifier diode's forward voltage.

Another interesting aspect of the output characteristic is
the short circuit current. Under short-circuit conditions
v 2 = e V F ,so from relation ( 6 ) the following results:

I---

598

'in

2vFLll

Hence, iz has a triangular shape with an ampIitude 12equal to:

frequency and the related maximum output power can be

found.
Another possible design criteria is to choose& which gives
the maximum full load transformer efficiency. To this end,
the secondary losses AP2 can be calculated considering a
full load secondary current equal to half the short circuit
secondary current:

L I2

and average short circuit output ciment lCcis equal to:

The full load transformer efficiency is therefore given by:

The output characteristic V,, vs. I,,, that was measured

exhibits an approximateIy linear behaviour that can be
expressed as:

where:

So, the maximum output power P,uM is obtained when the

load resistance RL is equal to R, and is given by:

It should be noted that under these conditions, the output

voltage is very sensitive to load variations and a post
regulator is necessary to interface the converter with a load
that requires a precise voltage regulation (i.e. 45%). Since
a standard linear or switching post-regulator can be used,
this aspect wiIl be neglected in the rest of the work.
We observe that equations (12), (14) and (15) imply that
the maximum output power is a function of switching
frequencyfl and that it increases asjl decreases, Hence, for
a given transformer, it is important to determine the best
operating frequency. This can be done by considering the
primary and secondary losses of the transformer, which in
turn, depend on the operating fiequencyJ. Primary losses,
M I , do not depend on transformer output power because
the primary magnetizing impedance is lower than the
primary equivalent load impedance for loads of practical
interest. For this reason the term dp!and can be calculated
under no-load conditions:

Based on these results a laboratory prototype was

developed and will be presented in Section V.

Experimental results

Based on the scheme in Fig. 2, a laboratory prototype was

realized, using the presented transformer #5. The input
voltage was Vi,=12 V while the switching frequency was
J=l.OS MHz. To reduce converter size, a four layer PCB
was used, where the primary driving stage and the
secondary rectifier were placed in layers 1 and 4
respectively. The primary and secondary windings were
placed on layers 2 and 3 respectively, as shown in Fig. 3.
FR4 thickness between layers 1 and 2 and between layers 3
and 4 was 1.5 mm, while between 2 and 3 it was 0.8 mm,
as indicated in Table 1 for transformer #5. This layout
solution gave a total PCB thickness of about 3.9 mm, and a
total converter thickness of 7 mm, which made it adequate

LAYER 3

LAYER 4

Given maximum primary losses d p I u 4 x , which are dated Fig. 3. Laboratory prototypc dcvelopcd. Layer 1: primary stage, layer 2:
to PCB overtemperature, the minimum switching
primary winding, layer 3: secondary winding, laycr 4: output rectificr.
599

Tek Esegui I

for low profile applications.

With this layout, the primary driving circuit was placed
above the primary windings, so it was immersed in the
electromagnetic field generated from it. This implied two
problems: firstly, the electromagnetic field can influence
the control ICs behavior leading to sub-harmonic
oscillation, secondly the power MOSFET tab and large
PCB copper traces or planes are affected by eddy currents
that increase power losses. To overcome these problems
the PCB traces were made as small as possible and a
1.5 mm thick FR4 was used between layers 1-2 and 3-4.
Another laboratory test was carried out after reducing this
thickness to 0.8 mm. However, the behaviour of the circuit
did not change significantly, with only a 1% increase in the
input power and a 5% variation in the duty cycle.
Fig. 4 shows the operating waweforms for V,,=12 V,
V,,=6.3 V, 1,,,=0.5 A, Trace 1 is the half-bridfge output
voltage, trace 4 is the primary current and trace 2 is the
output voltage. The rise and fall time of the half-bridge
output voltage is in the order of 4011s thanks to the
auxiliary capacitors C7 and CX making a zero voltage
switching of power MOSFET possible.
Thanks to the auto inductance and mutual inductance
calculations presented in Section I1 and I11 (Tables 3 and 5)
one can obtain the output power and power losses as a
function of switching frequency for the transformer
Considered. For power loss evaluation, the winding
resistance as a function of switching fiequencyf, can be
calculated as [ 3 ] :

U
b

(Trigger

t.. . . . I . .

..

: . . . : . . . . . . . . . . . . . : . . . . : . . . . : , . . .1

. .

qChll 1 O . O V

5.OOV

IPl200nsj

Chl Z

m~~0.000s
00

-II

6.604

Fig. 4. Convcrtcr key waveforms. Tracc 1: half bridge output voltage.

Tnce 2: output voltage . Tracc 4: primary currcnt. Vin=IZV,Iout==O.SA.

IO

[wl
IO0

10

Rdc is the DC: resistance and

is a characteristic
Gequency, that has been experimentally determined and is
equal to 460kHz for primary windings and 68OkHz for
secondary windings. The maximum output power and the
winding power losses as a function of are shown in
Fig. 5. The value of fr=l.O8 M H z ensured a good
compromise between power losses in the order of 0.6 W,
and output power in the order of 5 W, thereby obtaining a
transformer efficiency equal to 87%. The transformer
temperature rise measured on outer PCB surface was 22C.
Assuming a voltage drop V F = O . ~ Vthe no load output
voltage (9) is equal to V,,=7.45 V, while the output
resistance (14) is %=2.82 Cl. Using these parameters the
output characteristic was plotted in Fig. 6 , together with
the measurements on the prototype, and it can be noted that
there is a good agreement.
The maximum output power measured was P-=3.9
W
while the calculated (15) was P4 . 9 1 W. This error,
equal to 25%, was due in part to transformer magnetic
parameter mismatch and partly to converter parasitic
effects. Using the measured magnetic parameters a
maximum output power of P- 4.14 W was calculated.
It can be noted that an error of 0.24 W was due to
converter modelrimtion while an error of 0.76 W was due
to transformer modellization.

where

.,.

10.

.,,

.,

Frequency [Hz] ?07

1OB

Fig. 5: Maximum output power and winding losscs as a function of the

switching frcquency for transfomcr #5.

10
93

;
-*
e

86

measured

-calculated
.-.-e
--t, m -

-a-

Fig. 6. Output charactcristic V - L of thc converter. -: prcdictcd, *:

measured.

600

Based on this analysis, a laboratory prototype was realized.

Its dimensions are 35x35x71m-1, the maximum output
power is 3.9 W and it has an efficiency of 57% at a
switching frequency of 1.08 MHz. Its performance, which
is still amenable to improvement, is comparable to that of
commercially avaiIabIe DUDC insulated power supplies
based on traditional transformers, but it is easy to be
manufacture and exhibits a high insulation voltage. Ln
conclusion, this design procedure is an attractive
alternative for insulated DC/DC power supplies.

60
50
R

E40
>.

.-

30

E 20

10

pcut Iwl

References

Fig. 7: Mcasurcd convertcr cfficicncy as a function of output powcr.

S.C. Tang, S.Y.R. Hui and H. Chung: A low-profile

power converter using printed-circuit board (PCB)
power transformer shielded with femte polymer
composite.
Power
Electronics
Specialists
Conference, 2000. PESC 00.
S.Y. Hui, Henry Shu-Hung Chung and S.C. Tang:
Characterization of Coreless printed circuit board
(PCB) transformers, IEEE Transactions on Power
Electronics, Vol. 15, No 6 , Nov. 2000, pp: 12751282.
S.Y. Hui, Henry Shu-Hung C h u g and S.C. Tang:
Coreless printed circuit board (PCB) transformers
for power MOSFETAGBT gate drive circuits, IEEE
Transactions on Power Electronics, Vol. 14, No 3,
May 1999, pp: 422 -430.
F.W. Grover. Inductance Calculation: working,
formulas and tables, New York: Dover
Publications, 1946.

We observed that a small error, less than 5% on the

magnetic parameter calculation, leads to a 20% error in
maximum outputpower evaluation.
Finally, Fig. 7 reports the converter efficiency
measurement, showing a 56.7% maximum efficiency at an
output power of 3.3 W.

6 Conclusions
A low-profile high insulation voltage D O C converter
with coreiess PCB transformers has been presented. The
inductances of the transformer were calculated with a
simple yet quite accurate numerical procedure, which was
verified on various transformer prototypes. The converter
was then analyzed and expressions for the output voItage
and maximum output power derived.

601