| Abstract |
A rectifier with Power Factor Correction (PFC) usually consists of a diode bridge, PFC stage and
output voltage regulation stage. This paper investigates the possibility of integrating the functions of
the rectifier diode bridge and the PFC stage. Rather than reducing component count, such integration
aims at diminishing conduction losses by reducing the number of switches in the power path.
In this paper, the widely used topology consisting of a diode bridge followed by a Boost converter is
used as a reference. Three other topologies derived from this one, which have fewer switches in the
power path, are presented and analyzed. Besides these Boost-derived topologies, a converter able to
operate with bipolar input voltage is presented and its usefulness for power factor correction is
assessed. Finally, a comparison between the analyzed topologies is presented. |
