Innovative materials/manufacturing for a prototype 600-1000VDC DC/DC Converter for Shipboard Radar

The limiting technology for solid-state phased-array radars has been the RF transmit/receive (T/R) modules. As these become mature, a critical supporting technology is the power supply. Subarrays of T/R modules require a power supply that converts an unregulated DC input at 650 V to 28 V with a peak power of 2.5 kW and 30% duty. The supply must have a power density of over 200 W/in3 and efficiency greater than 90%. Such a converter does not currently exist. In this SBIR, DTI proposes to develop a new converter that is substantially more compact and efficient than is available at present. Achieving a high power density requires operation at a high frequency to minimize the size of the capacitors, transformers, and inductors. The trade-off, however, is that the losses switching losses in the transistors and magnetic core losses increase with frequency. To minimize these losses and permit operation at high frequency, the converter will be based on state-of-the-art field-effect transistors. These transistors will have low losses because of their fast switching speeds, produced by an innovative gate drive previously developed by DTI.