Soft-switching converter DC-to-DC isolated with voltage bidirectional switches on the secondary side of an isolation transformer
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A soft-switching dc-to-dc converter for providing regulated voltage to a load combines the functions of loss-less soft switching at zero voltage and at a constant switching frequency on the primary side and soft switching at zero current on the secondary side of an isolation transformer for all load currents from full load to no-load and PWM output voltage regulation on the secondary side. This is made possible by using voltage bidirectional switching element in series with a low-pass filter on the secondary side and current bidirectional switching element on the primary side driven at close to 50% duty ratio with adjustable dead time between switching. The adjustable dead-time is realized by sensing voltages across paired primary side current bidirectional switching element in order to enable alternate turn ON of said pair only at zero voltage, thereby eliminating or greatly reducing switching losses under all load current conditions. The output voltage is regulated by PWM control of the voltage bidirectional switching element comprising one of the following: a bipolar transistor, or a MOSFET in series with a diode, or preferably a saturable reactor in series with a diode to form a magnetic amplifier on the secondary side.