A Unified Differential Mode Noise Estimation Method and Filter Size Comparison in Single-Phase Multileg and Multilevel Totem-Pole PFC Converters

Wide-bandgap power devices have enabled single-phase totem-pole (TP) power factor correction (PFC) converter designs to be switched at several tens of kilohertz under hard-switching and hundreds of kilohertz under soft-switching. It is straightforward to analyze and compare the volume of boost inductor for TP PFC converters having multileg and multilevel configurations operating under continuous-conduction-mode (CCM) and critical-conduction-mode (CrM) at various switching frequencies; however, the impact of topology and switching frequency selections remains unchallenged for generated differential mode (DM) noise. This article proposes a unified and generalized DM noise estimation method for multileg, and multilevel TP PFC converters operated under both CCM and CrM operation modes. The method has been verified with simulation results obtained from various TP PFC topologies, as well as experimental results obtained from single-leg CCM and 4-Level CCM TP PFC converters. The empirically determined boxed sizes of DM filters have been compared among various TP PFC topologies, and the best switching frequency for each topology has been determined with the integration of boost inductor volume comparison.