Design of Compact Solid-State Modulator for High-Power Electromagnetic Pulse Generation

Abstract

The proposed compact solid-state modulator for the generation of high-power electromagnetic (HPEM) pulses uses a lithium polymer battery as the input power source and is capable of achieving a 100-Hz pulse discharge rate with a peak voltage of 400 kV for 2 min. The developed pulse generator consists of two charging units. The primary charging unit is designed to work with 200-A battery current, which increases switching losses and temperature increments at the main switch. To compensate the problems, a half-bridge three-phase structure is connected to transformers via the proposed delta-star connection that decreases the turns ratio of the three-phase transformer effectively. Furthermore, the resonant components are intentionally placed on the secondary side of the three-phase transformer, which is characterized by low current and high voltage conditions. The secondary charging unit uses the resonance between the two capacitors, and the inductor must protect not only the controller, which is susceptible to HPEM pulse effects, but also the output rectifying diodes of the primary charging unit from the peak 20-kA pulse discharging effect. The design procedures and analysis are verified with simulations for each charging unit. The experimental results using various loads, including the actual tesla transformer, validate the system performance and confirm a 94% power efficiency with a peak power density of 431 W/L.