Utilization of active diodes in self-powered sensorless three-phase boost-rectifiers for energy harvesting applications

The main contribution of this paper is the use of sensorless active diodes to generate the gate signals for a three-phase boost-rectifier with a self-powered control scheme. The sensorless operation is achieved making use of the gate control signals generated by the active diode schemes on each of the switching devices using a pulse width half-controlled boost rectifier modulation technique (PWM-HCBR). The proposed scheme synchronizes the gate control signals with a three phase voltage supply. Autonomous operation is obtained making use of the output DC bus to feed the control circuitry, the active diodes and the driver circuitry. The three-phase boost-rectifier is supplied by a three-phase permanent magnet electric generator powered by a solar concentrator dish with variable voltage and variable frequency conditions. Experimental results report an efficiency of up to 94.6% for 25 W and an input of 3.6 V peak per phase with 450.