In this paper an
investigation into magnetic control (MC) of hard-switching (HS) DC-DC
converters is carried out. The proposed control method is based on the
modulation of the effective filter inductance of the converter when operating
in discontinuous conduction mode (DCM). It is well known that the output
characteristic of a HS DC-DC converter operating in DCM is dependent on the
effective inductance of the output filter. This way, by using a variable
inductance the output of the converter can be controlled. The proposed control
method can be applied to any converter topology, namely buck, boost,
buck-boost, flyback, forward, and so on. In this paper, the operation of the
buck converter with MC is investigated in detail as a case study. This work
proves that the proposed control method can be effectively used to control
DC-DC converters on its own or by combination with other control parameters as
duty cycle and/or frequency. An experimental prototype has been built to test
the proposed control method and modeling process and to demonstrate its
feasibility and possibilities.