Self-compensating switching power converter

DETAILED DESCRIPTION .
The invention provides self-compensating resonant switching high voltage power converters which solve the foregoing and other problems of known high voltage power supplies.
The power converters of the present invention achieve high efficiency over widely varying operating conditions, such as load, temperature and supply voltage, while having low weight and size.
They are able to operate efficiently with low conventional battery voltages such as used in portable devices.
The invention achieves these advantages, in part, by operating at a high frequency which is automatically adjusted in real time in accordance with variations in operating conditions in order to ensure that the switching devices always operates at the optimum point.
The invention automatically compensates for variations in input supply voltage, load and temperature, by sensing the actual voltage of the switching devices, and by controlling the switching to turn on or off at the appropriate time.
This effectively tracks the resonant frequency of the converter in real time, and automatically adjusts its operating frequency to match.
As a result, the invention can operate at high frequencies of the order of 300 Khz or higher, a factor of ten times the operating frequency of conventional fixed frequencies in converters.
This results in a substantial size and weight reduction, of the order of five times, for example, making the invention ideally suited for providing power to displays in portable laptop computers, on military or other aircraft, or in any high voltage application where it is desirable to reduce the size and weight of the power supply.
The invention advantageously always seeks and operates at the resonant frequency of the circuit, and follows changes in resonant frequency with changes in operating loads and conditions.
Moreover, the circuit employs a pulse width modulator type of driver, which is very efficient and very fast correcting.
Moreover, the power converter of the invention will always start into any load, such as large capacitive loads which would cripple a linear design, and at any temperature, even where the beta of the switching transistor is extremely low