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Implementation of A High Voltage Power Supply
Implementation of A High Voltage Power Supply
Abstract—An implementation of a high voltage power supply compared to an unregulated high voltage power supply.
with a voltage multiplier using a DSP-based controller is pro-
posed. The DSP controller is used to close the feedback loop II. H ALF WAVE C OCKROFT-WALTON VOLTAGE
from the output voltage to the PWM signals of the power stage. M ULTIPLIER
By using the MATLAB/Simulink embedded coder design time is
greatly reduced and errors are far less likely to manifest. The In the Half Wave Cockroft Walton (HWCW) voltage multi-
design, consisting of a DSP controller, does not require addi- plier, shown in Fig. 1, the output DC voltage is distorted, and
tional components and is simple compared to more conventional shows a voltage drop of ∆V0 and a ripple of 2δV
analog control techniques. Experimental results using the Texas
Instruments (TI) DSP TMS320F28335 Microcontroller show a I 1 2 3 n
δV = ( + + + ··· + ) (1)
rapid convergence and good real-time behavior. For example, 2fs C1 C2 C3 Cn
the output of a 12-link multiplier with a rise time lower than
5mS and a low ripple of under 0.1% is actively corrected by the where I is the output current, Ci is the capacitance of the
digital feedback loop. i-th stage and fs is the switching frequency of the AC power
Index Terms—High Voltage, HVDC, Half Wave Cockcroft- supply. Assuming equal capacitors in all stages (C1 = C2 =
Walton. C3 = · · · = Cn = C), the ripple is given by Eq. (2) and the
voltage drop by Eq. (3).
I. I NTRODUCTION
I n(n + 1)
High voltage power supplies are widely used in many δV = (2)
Cfs 4
industry applications, such as scanning electron microscopy, 3
n2
medical X-ray imaging and particle filtering systems, to name I 2n n
∆V0 = + − (3)
just a few [1]-[5]. The use of a very high turn ratio transformer fs C 3 2 6
to achieve the high voltage is limited by its large leakage Thus, the output voltage of a HWCW voltage multiplier
inductance and parasitic capacitance [6]. Therefore, voltage circuit can be calculated as a function of the amplitude of the
multiplier circuits are commonly used to attain high voltages. ac input voltage, Vamp :
The Half-Wave Cockcroft-Walton voltage multiplier (HWCW)
is the most commonly used voltage multiplier because it Vout = 2nVamp − ∆V0 =
provides the advantages of high voltage boosting (applicable I 2n3 n2 n (4)
= 2nVamp − ( + − )
to the 10’s kV range), is compact, causes low voltage stress fs C 3 2 6
on the diodes and capacitors, and is cost efficient [7]. Eq. (4) reveals that additional stages to the HWCW circuit
Power supplies for medical devices such as an X-ray gen- that should increase the output voltage also increase the
erator need to supply high voltage and high power for very voltage drop, till the point where additional stages will no
short time intervals. Therefore, in order to meet the stringent longer increase the output voltage but reduce it. Finding the
requirements of X-ray applications the dynamic response of maximum voltage output of a HWCW circuit is attained as in
the power supply must be very fast. The output voltage must Eq. (5)
reach its steady state within a very short time interval, usually
around 10 msec, to avoid noise or defects in X-ray the ∂Vout I 1
= 2Vamp − (2n2 + n − ) = 0 (5)
image for various load conditions[3][4]. For this paper, we ∂n fs C 6
implemented a DSP-based-controller approach for reducing From Eq. (5), the maximum number of stages to be used
design time of the HWCW voltage multipliers and improving for a given system can be approximated (if n > 4) as
the output ripple. The TI TMS320F28335 Microcontroller with r
the MATLAB/Simulink embedded coder is used for real-time Vout fs C 1
nmax = + (6)
digital feedback and system control. I 12
Initial experimental results show a a fast settling time To reduce the output ripple, it is necessary to increase either
of under 5mS and a reduction of over 80% of the ripple the switching frequency or the capacitance of the multiplier.
Fig. 1. Example of a HWCW voltage-multiplier