The University of British Columbia

October 20, 2019 | Featured, Graduate Student Achievements, Student Achievements

ECE Student Wins Prize in IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics

UBC ECE Ph.D. candidate Mohammad Ali Saket, his advisor Dr. Martin Ordonez, and ECE alumni Dr. Navid Shafiei received a Second Place Prize Paper Award for 2018 in IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics. Their paper is titled “Planar Transformers with Near-Zero Common-Mode Noise for Flyback and Forward Converters”, and it was nominated for the award out of 935 papers published in 2018. IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics is the most prestigious journal in the field of power electronics.

The paper proposes a new design method for planar transformers—paired layers interleaving—that eliminates a fundamental trade-off in planar transformer design. Using the proposed method, it is possible to design highly efficient transformers that have not only low conduction loss but also minimal noise emission. These two advantages cannot be attained using traditional design methods, so planar transformers were traditionally either efficient (low conduction loss) or low noise. The proposed method resolves this trade-off and introduces a new family of planar transformers that have it all. Planar transformers are the state-of-the-art high-frequency transformers used at the heart of power electronics converters, which in turn are fundamental to the continued profitable growth of the telecommunications, automotive, aerospace, medical, military, and data processing industries. As a major part of the circuit, the design of the planar transformers significantly affects the converter’s overall performance. Now, with the proposed paired layers interleaving method, the efficiency and performance of such converters can be considerably improved. Says Mohammad Ali Saket about the paper, “Paired layers interleaving proposes a new approach toward the noise issue in planar transformers. In the past, designers had to minimize parasitic capacitance of the transformer to reduce the noise, which had a side effect of increasing power loss. With the new approach, we are not fighting with parasitic capacitors. Instead, we design the structure of the transformer in such a way that the parasitic capacitors cancel each other out and result in almost no noise generation without compromising the efficiency.” The work was done in collaboration with researchers from Delta-Q Research in Canada and was funded in part through a Strategic Grant from the NSERC.

Learn more about the paper, "Planar Transformers With Near-Zero Common-Mode Noise for Flyback and Forward Converters"