Received 24 February 2024, accepted 6 March 2024, date of publication 18 March 2024, date of current version 16 April 2024.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3376392

Hybrid Control Method of Full-Bridge

LLC Resonant Converter Based
on Electric Vehicle
YUNTAO YUE , YUFAN LIU , JIARAN ZHANG, HONGWEI ZHAO, AND JIN YANG
School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Beijing 100044, China
Corresponding author: Yuntao Yue ([email protected])

ABSTRACT The high charging efficiency of LLC resonant converters over a very wide range of load
conditions in electric vehicle charging systems has long been a research hotspot. In this paper, a hybrid control
method is proposed for LLC resonant converter by combining pulse width modulation (PWM) and burst
control to address the issues of small excitation current and limited output voltage range under the light load
condition. The resonant current energy in the burst-on period is used to supplement the missing excitation
current energy from PWM control zero voltage switching to realize PWM-Burst control. Therefore, a hybrid
control of PFM and PWM-Burst is employed for LLC resonant converters under full load conditions.
The proposed hybrid control method focuses on steady-state operation, and its operating principles are
introduced and analyzed. Finally, simulation and experiments were conducted through Matlab-Simulink to
verify the feasibility of the proposed method, and a 1-kW laboratory prototype was constructed to validate
the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed method.

INDEX TERMS Burst control, electric vehicle, LLC resonant converter, PFM control, PWM control.

I. INTRODUCTION and step-down is realized according to the actual charging

In the past decade, there has been a significant surge in the voltage [5], [6], [7]. Due to their desirable characteristics such
adoption of electric vehicles to combat the reliance on fossil as high efficiency and reliability, LLC resonant converters
fuels, a crucial step towards achieving carbon neutrality [1]. are considered an attractive power architecture in electric
Consequently, this has sparked a notable growth in the electric vehicle charging systems and have been thoroughly studied
vehicle charger market and a strong desire to enhance charg- in the literatures [8] and [9]. The current mainstream LLC
ing efficiency. The DC-DC converter, an integral part of the resonant converter is a bidirectional converter [10], [11], but
electric vehicle charger, requires further optimization to meet in the case of electric vehicle charging, energy is not required
these demands. to complete bidirectional flow. Thus, in this paper, rectifier
The DC-DC converter has a very wide range of input diodes are used for secondary-side full bridge switch tubes to
voltage, but it requires a high efficiency to work at nominal greatly save device resources. It has been extensively studied
input voltage [2]. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the and implemented in practical applications.
efficiency of the DC-DC converter under light load at nominal Generally, pulse frequency modulation (PFM) is employed
input voltage [3], [4]. When using the traditional DC-DC in LLC converters, but the limited operating frequency range
converter in electric vehicle charging systems, there are prob- of the converter restricts the attainment of wide-range voltage
lems such as large current stress and power return. However, regulation. Therefore, most conventional LLC topologies are
these problems can be solved by adding an LLC resonant used in dc converters with a small input or output range. With
cavity to the DC-DC converter, and the function of step-up the expansion of the application domain, LLC converters
with wide input or output ranges have emerged as a new
The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and research field [12]. To achieve a wide voltage output range
approving it for publication was Junho Hong . for LLC converters within a limited operating frequency,
2024 The Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.
VOLUME 12, 2024 For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 51859
 Y. Yue et al.: Hybrid Control Method of Full-Bridge LLC Resonant Converter

various methods have been proposed from different aspects the output voltage ripple. This innovation enhances the EMI
of circuit design. Optimizing the driving signal modulation is performance and broadens the output voltage spectrum.
a significant approach to increasing the output voltage range.
Typically, based on PFM control, pulse width modulation II. PROPOSED LLC RESONANT CONVERTER
(PWM), phase-shift modulation (PSM), and burst-mode con- A. CIRCUIT CONFIGURATION
trol can be added. Although these control methods have been The topological structure of the full-bridge LLC resonant
widely used in other types of converters, some new issues converter is shown in Figure 1. The full-bridge inverter is
arise when they are applied to LLC converters. composed of four power MOS tubes; the resonant cavity is
In [13], a hybrid control strategy combining PWM with composed of a resonant inductor Lr , a resonant capacitor Cr
PFM was investigated to achieve a lower voltage gain and a magnetizing inductor Lr; the secondary side of the
under light load conditions. However, the soft-switching transformer is a full bridge rectifier structure; Co is connected
performance was not improved, resulting in output voltage in parallel with the full-bridge rectifier structure for filtering,
constraint. PSM control has been widely adopted in LLC and finally, the DC output voltage is obtained.
converters to reduce transformer core losses and adjust the
output voltage under light load conditions [8], [14], [15],
[16]. However, when the phase-shift angle is large, the
soft-switching performance of the lagging bridge arm may be
affected. Moreover, when the circuit operates under light load
conditions, this may impact the reliability of the converter
operation. In [17] and [18], PSM was used as a supplemen-
tary control strategy for PFM to achieve a wide gain range.
In [19] and [20], phase-shedding methods were proposed,
FIGURE 1. Full-bridge LLC resonant converter topology.
which enhance light load efficiency by reducing the number
of devices. However, phase shedding can only be applied
to multiple transformer systems. Burst control converts the When the input terminal is connected to the rated voltage,
output voltage of the switch array from continuous mode to the full-bridge inverter circuit converts the rated voltage into
discontinuous mode [21], [22], which decreases the equiv- positive and negative input voltage. Q1 and Q3 , Q2 and Q4
alent input voltage of the resonant cavity and thus reduces are complementary frequency modulations used to control the
the output voltage. However, burst control will also increase switch network of the converter, with the switching frequency
the output ripple, making the electromagnetic interference of the power tube considered as the operating frequency [12].
(EMI) characteristics of the system worse [23]. In the burst- The resonance inductance Lr, resonance capacitance Cr, and
on period, the resonant current decreases when the output magnetizing inductance Lm together form a resonant cavity.
voltage increases, and vice versa. When the resonant current The rectifier filter circuit diode is turned on and off based
increases, the resonant inductor and the magnetic flux of on the direction of the secondary current, and the parallel
the excitation inductor will increase, thus, the output voltage structure with the filter capacitor allows for more precise
ripple and loss will increase. This phenomenon is especially filtering of the high-frequency or low-frequency AC portion
obvious when the output voltage is low, which affects the of the DC output voltage. Finally, the DC output voltage
converter conversion efficiency under light load. required to power the load is obtained.
Through the analysis of PWM control and Burst control,
it can be observed that:
1. The decrease of duty cycle follows the decrease of
excitation current of PWM control, which cannot provide all
the energy required for zero voltage switching (ZVS) of the
switching tube under light load;
2. Similarly, the resonant current of burst control is too
large to achieve high conversion efficiency in this system.
Therefore, in this paper, a hybrid control method combin-
ing PWM and burst control is proposed to make the PWM
FIGURE 2. Typical waveform of Burst control.
comparator generate PWM pulses in the burst-on period.
By harnessing the excessive resonant current during the turn-
on period, the PWM control is empowered to achieve ZVS, III. OPERATION PRINCIPLE
thus addressing the limitation of insufficient excitation cur- A. BURST INTERMITTENT CONTROL
rent in conventional PWM control. Furthermore, the hybrid Burst control, also known as intermittent control, is a control
approach allows for the conversion of a portion of the burst method to reduce switching losses so that the switch tube is in
control’s energy into PWM control, leading to a reduction periodic conduction. During the switching tube-off time, the
in both the energy consumption on the secondary side and energy can be stored by energy storage components such as

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current is equal to the excitation current, and the duty cycle

is smaller.
Since the peak excitation current is positively correlated
with the output voltage when the converter is running under
light load conditions, the output current needs to be reduced to
achieve output voltage stability; however, the reduction of the
output current will lead to the reduction of excitation current
and thus affect the duty cycle of PWM control pulses, so the
duty cycle is reduced. At this time, the switching tubes Q2 and
Q3 are difficult to achieve ZVS, and the EMI characteristics
FIGURE 3. PWM control waveform.
and stability of the system are impaired.
the switching tube junction capacitor to provide the energy
required for operation during the turn-on time. A typical C. PWM-BURST HYBRID CONTROL
waveform is shown in Figure 2. The analysis of PWM control and burst control indicates that:
Defining the duty cycle of burst control as Dburst , the 1. In light load operations, the duty cycle of PWM con-
resonant current during the burst-on period can be expressed trol follows the decrease of excitation current, which cannot
as [23]: provide all the energy required by the switching tube ZVS.
2. Similarly, the resonant current of burst control is too
Uinl (t) − Uoutl (t)
irl (t) = (1) large at a light load, which greatly affects the conversion
jXr efficiency of the system.
where: ir1 (t) denotes the fundamental component of the reso- Therefore, the two control methods are combined so that
nant current; the PWM comparator generates PWM pulses in the burst-
Uin1 (t) denotes the fundamental component of the input on period. The excessive resonant current in the burst-on
voltage; time is used to provide energy for the PWM control ZVS to
Uout1 (t) denotes the fundamental component of the output compensate for the defect that the PWM control excitation
voltage. current is too small. Meanwhile, since some of the energy
Xr denotes the resonant cavity equivalent reactance. of burst control is transferred to PWM control, the energy
The equivalent reactance of the resonant cavity is transformed to the output side is reduced, and the output
expressed as: voltage ripple is also reduced; the EMI characteristics are
improved, and the output voltage range is widened.
1
Xr = ωs Lr − (2) Both control methods use double closed-loop stacked PI
ωs Cr control. The outer is the voltage loop PI controller to intro-
From Eq. (2), Xr varies positively with the switching fre- duce negative voltage feedback; the inner current loop PI
quency ωs , but since there is a maximum value of frequency controller will feedback current input compared with the
ωs , Xr does not grow indefinitely, and the same maximum current amplitude, to achieve the feedback voltage on the
value exists; also, Xr is related to the resonant parameters current amplitude control. Then, the PWM generator’s logic
of the converter, and increasing ωs or the value of reso- generates PWM pulses at a certain frequency and in a visible
nant parameters can reduce the equivalent impedance of the duty cycle. Similarly, after the voltage and current double-
resonant cavity. Combined with (1), the resonant current loop control, the on-off signal of burst control is generated.
decreases with the growth of the output voltage during the Finally, the two signals are superimposed by a logic and gate
burst-on period, and vice versa. When ir becomes larger, the circuit to form a PWM-Burst control pulse.
voltage across the resonant capacitor increases, while the When the converter operates in burst control, the control of
resonant inductance and excitation inductance flux increase, its frequency does not affect the converter’s operating state,
which will increase output voltage ripple and losses after and the converter is only related to the burst control duty
transformer conversion to the secondary side. This phe- cycle. Meanwhile, a certain periodic current change during
nomenon is especially obvious at low output voltage, which the burst control conduction period is only related to the
affects the conversion efficiency of the converter under a light system parameters and the current output voltage [14]. In the
load. early design stages, the burst control frequency should be set
as the rated operating frequency of the converter. When the
B. PWM CONTROL DPWM is set to 0.5 in the initial state, the DPWM varies with
There are two typical waveforms for PWM control, as shown the output voltage as the converter charging process proceeds.
in Figure 3. This variation is unpredictable and nonlinear because the
The first one is when the switching tubes Q2 and Q3 are equivalent load size of the electric vehicle power pack is
off, i.e., the t3∼t4 period. At this time, the excitation current variable and the required charging voltage varies from vehicle
is larger than the resonant current, and the duty cycle is larger. to vehicle. In this case, it is impossible to fit the DPWM value
The second one is the t3∼t4 period. At this time, the resonant linearly. Theoretically, the minimum duty cycle at different

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FIGURE 4. The principle diagram of PWM-Burst control.

1. Area A: The output voltage Uout and output current Iout

in this area are located in the following areas:
 
Iout
Uout > Umin + I − (Umax − Umin ) (3)
Imax
0 < Iout < Imax (4)
Under the premise that the charging equipment power is
determined, this area belongs to the heavy load operation
situation. In this case, PFM control is used, and PFM pulses
with a fixed duty cycle and adjustable frequency are used as
FIGURE 5. Schematic diagram of working mode. the drive signal of the full-bridge LLC resonant converter.
2. Area B: In this case, the converter runs between light
load and heavy load, close to half load. At this time, the output
output voltage points can be collected in the design process voltage Uout and output current Iout are taken as follows:
according to the converter design specifications, and the    
nearest two voltage values of this voltage can be found by Umin + 0.5 − IImaxout
(Umax − Umin ) ⩽ Uout
checking the table with the minimum duty cycle correspond-     (5)
⩽ Umin + 1 − IImax out
(Umax − Umin )
ing to the output voltage and calculating the DPWM value
using the linear difference method [14]. 0.5Imax ⩽ Iout ⩽ Imax (6)

D. PFM+PWM-BURST HYBRID CONTROL In this case, PWM control is used, and PWM pulses with a
fixed frequency of 150 kHz and an adjustable duty cycle are
The LLC resonant converter using conventional PFM-PWM
used as the driving signals for the upper and lower bridge
control is mostly divided into two cases: PFM at light load
arms of the full-bridge LLC resonant converter, with the
or PFM at heavy load, and PWM at light load or PWM at
driving signal duty cycle varying with the load and output
heavy load. Both PFM and PWM control can achieve the
voltage.
basic requirements of the converter during the heavy load
3. Area C: the output voltage Uout and output current Iout
operation, but the ZVS characteristics of PWM control are
take the value of this region:
impaired at light load, and the output voltage ripple of PFM
 
control is large, so the combination of PFM-Burst control Iout
is considered in Section 2.3. Therefore, this paper considers Uout < Umin + 0.5 − (Umax − Umin ) (7)
Imax
combining PWM-Burst control under light load and PFM 0 < Iout < 0.5Imax (8)
control under heavy load.
When charging electric vehicles, due to the limitations of In this case, the PWM-Burst control method is adopted,
models and power pack types, different electric vehicles cor- and intermittent PWM pulses with a fixed frequency and an
respond to different charging voltages and charging currents; adjustable duty cycle are taken as the drive signal to drive
even the charging voltage and charging current of the same the primary side switch tubes of the full-bridge LLC resonant
model under different power consumption conditions may converter.
vary during multiple charging. Considering this situation, the
output voltage range and output current range are chosen to IV. PARAMETER DESIGN
define different working modes, as shown in Figure 6. In this This section proposes the objective function and constraints
figure, Umax and Umin indicate the maximum and minimum for optimizing the resonance parameters of the converter
output voltage, and Imax and Imin indicate the maximum and based on the above control strategy and uses the quantum
minimum output current, respectively. particle swarm algorithm to design the resonance parameters.

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A. OBJECTIVE FUNCTION tanθ is the impedance angle,

The overall loss of the LLC resonant converter is negatively Im−peak is the peak excitation inductance current,
related to the conversion efficiency of the system, i.e., the Coss is the switching tube junction capacitance,
essence of maximizing the conversion efficiency is to min- Ts is the switching period,
imize the system loss rate. Then, the objective function can and Tdead is the dead time.
be expressed as the minimum system loss to achieve output
voltage with a wider range under different resonant parame- 3) OPERATING FREQUENCY CONSTRAINT
ter selection values, with any preset range of input voltage, The operating frequency of the switch should satisfy:
switching frequency, and load resistance, as shown below: 
fs ⩽ fmin ⩽ fr
X X X (18)
minfitness (Lm , Lr , Cr ) = η (9) fmax ⩾ fr
Uin ∈Us f ∈fab Req ∈Rs
where fs and fr denote the two resonant operating frequencies
Eloss of the resonant network, fmax denotes the maximum oper-
η= (10)
Pout ating frequency, and fmin denotes the minimum operating
where, Pout represents the output power of the converter, and frequency.
Eloss represents the overall loss of the converter.
4) BATTERY PACK LOAD CONSTRAINT
B. CONSTRAINTS Considering the battery pack load charging condition, if the
1) DC GAIN CONSTRAINT converter can complete the charging behavior at the worst
The converter should operate in the inductive region, so the working point, the converter can complete all charging
DC gain constraint is expressed as: behaviors under this load. Therefore, the battery pack load
constraint can be expressed as:
G(Qmin , 2πfmin ) ⩾ G(Qmin , 2πfr ) (11) s 
Tdead 1 1
Where Lm−vile ⩽ l+ G2min − (19)
8π fr Coss k k (l + k)
1
G(s) = r 2 2 (12)
5) CONTROL CONDITION CONSTRAINT
 
1 1
1+k 1− fn2
+ fn − fn Q2
The peak resonant current is set to Ir−max . To prevent the
where, K represents the ratio of resonant inductance to exci- occurrence of overcurrent protection caused by excessive
tation inductance, i.e., the inductance normalized quantity; Q resonant current, the resonant current at any moment in the
represents the resonant converter quality factor; fn represents whole working process of the converter should be less than
the normalized operating switching frequency. the peak resonant current. Thus, the resonant current peak
Meanwhile, due to the limited operating switching fre- Ir−max satisfies.
quency range of the converter, to ensure that the converter s
√ Uout n2 R2o Ts2
can complete the charging process normally, the DC gain also Ir−max = 2Ir−rms = + 4π 2 (20)
needs to meet: 4nRo Lm2

Uout−max ⩽ Uin−min G(Qmax , fn−min ) (13) Meanwhile, it must be ensured that the burst control provides
sufficient resonant current for the switching tube junction
Uout−min ⩾ Uin−max G(Qmin , fn−max ) (14)
capacitance in the burst-on period to achieve ZVS under
light load conditions for all switching tubes. Defining the
2) ZVS CONSTRAINT
minimum current for the switching tube ZVS achievement
The ZVS requires two necessary conditions, namely, induc-
as Ir−zvs , we have:
tive impedance and a large enough resonant current peak,
to make the junction voltage drop to 0 at both ends of the 2Uin Coss
Ir−zνs = (21)
switching tube during the dead time: Tdead
ZnI
tanθ = ⩾0 (15) C. ALGORITHM FLOW
ZnR Step 1: Initialize the design specifications of the LLC reso-
1 2 1
(Lm + Lr )Im−peak ⩾ Coss Uin2 (16) nant converter
2 2 The initial parameters of the converter usually include
Ts Tdead
Lm < (17) input voltage range, output voltage range, switching oper-
16Coss ating frequency range, load resistance range, resonant fre-
where: ZnR is the real part of the input impedance of the quency, power rating, etc. Meanwhile, the switching tube
resonant network, junction capacitance, drive signal period, and dead time need
ZnI is the imaginary part of the input impedance of the to be preset.
resonant network, Step 2: Initialize the population particle position

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Call the fitness function to calculate the fitness values of TABLE 2. The design results of resonance parameter optimization.
all particles within the design range of resonance parameters
and determine the particle range.
Step 3: Initialize the parameters of the QPSO algorithm and
generate N sets of particles randomly.

TABLE 1. The parameters of the QPSO algorithm.

N particles are randomly generated, their positions are

denoted as (Lm , Lr , Cr ), and the initialization is set as
l = 0, i = l, 2, · · · , N .
Step 4: Calculate the current fitness values of N sets of res- FIGURE 6. Fitness function convergence curve.
onance parameters and update the individual average optimal
position Mbest , individual optimal position Pbest and global loss rate stabilizes around 0.1 until about 650 iterations. The
optimal position gbest. convergence of the algorithm can also be observed from the
Calculate the current fitness value of N sets of resonance curve. If the number of iterations is further increased, the
parameters at the k-th iteration, and compare it with the mini- parameter values will be more accurate.
mum fitness value of the individuals in the previous iterations.
Then, compare the current adaptation minima of each particle V. SIMULATION RESULTS
with the global adaptation minima: if it is better, update the A full-bridge LLC resonant converter rated at 15 kW is
current global optimal position gbest keep the global adapta- modeled in Matlab-Simulink, and the design method of the
tion minima, and determine the individual average optimal resonant network parameters is derived from Section III.
position Mbest . From the above output voltage range, it can be seen that:
Step 5: Update the particle position
Calculate the particle positions for the next iteration, where 200V ⩽ Uout ⩽ 750V (23)
the control parameter α uses an adaptive linear decay factor. 0 < Iout ⩽ 75A (24)
21Iout

l K −k A:Uout > 750 − , 0 < Iout < 75A
α= (22)

+ 
 5
2 2K 



At the beginning of the iteration, α is larger, and the particle


21Iout 21Iout

search ability is stronger; at the end of the iteration, α is B:475 − ⩽ Uout ⩽ 750 − ,37.5A ⩽ Iout
smaller, and the particle search ability is weakened; however,

 5 5
⩽ 75A



the particles tend to be stable at this time, so the whole 
 C:Uout < 475 − 21Iout , 0 < Iout < 37.5A



algorithm can achieve stable convergence.
5
Step 6: determine whether the number of iterations is
(25)
reached. If it is reached, then go to the next step; otherwise,
return to Step 4 and re-enter the optimization process. The output voltage and current in the charging process are
Step 7: The global optimal position of the current particle determined by the load of the power battery pack, which is
is output as the optimal result, and the algorithm execution is highly random. To recreate the charging process of electric
completed. vehicles to the maximum extent, Uout is randomly taken,
and the output situation is simulated and tested separately
D. OPTIMIZATION RESULTS to verify whether the wide output voltage range is achieved
Using the QPSO algorithm to determine resonance parame- with this control strategy. The simulation test diagrams from
ters, the final optimal design results are listed in Table 2. top to bottom are drive signal, resonant current and excitation
Figure 6 shows the convergence curve of the fitness func- current, output current, and output voltage.
tion during the execution of the QPSO algorithm. Taking the The simulation results under different operating conditions
minimum relative loss rate as the fitness function, its value are shown in Figure 7. They are the simulated waveforms
decreases rapidly as the number of iterations increases. The at an output power of 200V, 460V, 600V, and 750V, and
reduction rate decreases until about 500 iterations when the the corresponding output currents are 12A, 27.58 A, 40.8A,
relative loss rate fluctuates between 0.1 and 0.2; the relative and 45 A, respectively. From these simulation test diagrams,

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FIGURE 7. Simulation results. (a) 750V output voltage. (b) 600V output voltage. (c) 460V output voltage. (d) 200V
output voltage.

it can be observed that the proposed converter can achieve TABLE 3. The specifications of the full-bridge LLC resonant converter
model.
a stable output, and the operating pattern is the same as the
previous analysis result. As shown in Figure 7(c)(d), the issue
of uncontrolled converter voltage is addressed under light
load. At this time, for the converter working in region C, the
pulsation error is negligible. The PWM-Burst control is used
to provide the converter with a drive signal of PWM pulses in
the burst-on period.
The simulation indicates that the PFM+PWM-Burst con-
trol strategy can enable the full-bridge LLC resonant con-
verter to work in the normal output state based on electric
vehicle charging equipment, realize ZVS effectively under all
load conditions, reduce circuit losses, and effectively widen
the output voltage range, thereby verifying the feasibility and

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rationality of the control strategy. Next, the control strategy is

used in the full-bridge LLC resonant converter prototype for
experimental analysis.

VI. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

An experimental prototype was designed to verify the oper-
ating principle and performance of the proposed converter,
as shown in Figure 8. The output voltage range is 200-500V.
It has a resonant frequency of 153 kHz and a switching
frequency range of 100-250 kHz, as shown in Table 4.

FIGURE 9. The gate voltage of the MOSFET for the switching network.

FIGURE 8. Laboratory prototype.

FIGURE 10. Waveforms with the PWM control.

TABLE 4. Full-bridge LLC resonant converter prototype.

FIGURE 11. The waveforms with the PWM-burst control.

Figure 9 illustrates the gate voltage of the MOSFETs in the

whole switching network of the proposed converter. The rise thereafter, soft switching is achieved, which improves the
tie of the gate voltage is 2us, which satisfies the requirement reliability of the system over a wide voltage output range.
of frequency modulation. Figure 12 shows the resonant current of the resonant tank
Figure 10 shows the output voltage waveform of the LLC of the proposed prototype for the switching network under
converter when only PWM control is used. It can be observed different load conditions. Figure 12(a) shows the resonant
that with PWM control alone, the switching process of the current curve of the converter under light load, when the
transistors results in hard switching, causing voltage spikes converter operates in region C. When the excitation current
due to the abrupt changes in the transistor state. and the capacitor voltage of the switch junction complete
Figure 11 shows the output voltage waveform of the LLC the energy transfer process, the zero voltage of the switch is
converter when PWM-burst control is used. There are voltage on, and the dead time is over. Under this load condition, the
spikes only in the first switching cycle of Burst-on, and converter can achieve a stable DC output.

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to the resonant current and can achieve ZVS for a period of

time. Under this load condition, the converter can also achieve
stable DC output.
By applying the PFM+PWM-Burst control strategy to the
full-bridge LLC resonant converter prototype, the control
strategy can realize output voltage control under different
load conditions, and the direct connection between the control
area division and the output helps to widen the output voltage
range, thereby reducing the loss caused by the failure to
achieve ZVS in the previous light load control and realizing
ZVS under the full load condition. This confirms the applica-
bility of the control strategy.
In Figure 13, the efficiency of the proposed PWM-burst
method and traditional PWM are shown under full load con-
ditions. When the load is below 70%, PWM cannot achieve
ideal voltage regulation, while PWM-burst can. Under heavy
load conditions, the efficiency of PWM-burst is also higher
than that of PWM.

VII. CONCLUSION
This paper introduces the parameter design method of the
commonly used full bridge LLC resonant converter in the
DC/DC module of charging equipment, and proposes a
hybrid control method PWM control with Burst control. The
following conclusions are drawn:
(1) PWM control can effectively reduce the current stress
during the Burst-on period, while Burst control can pro-
vide sufficient current during the Burst-on period to enable
high-frequency soft switching of the switches. The combi-
nation of the two methods allows the converter to maintain
reliability based on a wide range of voltage outputs.
(2) The current variation during the Burst-on period is only
FIGURE 12. (a) The resonant current waveform under light load. (b) The
related to the difference between the input and output voltages
resonant current waveform under half load. (c) The resonant current and the resonant cavity parameters, and is independent of the
waveform under full load. load parameters. Therefore, the optimization of the resonant
cavity parameters does not need to consider load changes,
reducing the complexity of parameter design.
The experiment has verified the effectiveness of the
described method and the correctness of the analysis.

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FIGURE 13. Efficiency comparison between the PWM and PWM-Burst with extended high-efficiency range for wide voltage gain application in
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[3] X. Wu, R. Li, and X. Cai, ‘‘A wide output voltage range LLC resonant
Figure 12(b) shows the resonant current curve of the con- converter based on topology reconfiguration method,’’ IEEE J. Emerg. Sel.
Topics Power Electron., vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 969–983, Feb. 2022.
verter under half load. When the converter is working in
[4] Z. Zhang, C. Liu, M. Wang, Y. Si, Y. Liu, and Q. Lei, ‘‘High-efficiency
region B, the excitation current and resonant current are high-power-density CLLC resonant converter with low-stray-capacitance
equal to realize ZVS. Under this load condition, the converter and well-heat-dissipated planar transformer for EV on-board charger,’’
can also achieve stable DC output. Figure 12(c) shows the IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 35, no. 10, pp. 10831–10851, Oct. 2020.
[5] H. Park, M. Kim, H. Kim, and J. Jung, ‘‘Design methodology of tightly
resonant current curve of the converter under full load. When regulated dual-output LLC resonant converter using PFM-APWM hybrid
the converter works in region A, the excitation current is equal control method,’’ Energies, vol. 12, no. 11, p. 2146, Jun. 2019.

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[6] R. G. Kumari and P. Sravani, ‘‘Analysis of uni-directional and bi- YUNTAO YUE received the M.S. and Ph.D.
directional LLC resonant converter for battery charger application in degrees in power electronics from China Univer-
electric vehicle,’’ J. Phys., Conf., vol. 1172, Mar. 2019, Art. no. 012098. sity of Mining and Technology, Beijing, China, in
[7] T. Jun, L. I. Facheng, L. I. Xiang, and Y. Xingchen, ‘‘Loss analysis and 2003 and 2006, respectively. Since 2007, he has
optimization design of half-bridge LLC resonant converter,’’ IOP Conf. been an Associate Professor and the Dean of
Ser., Mater. Sci. Eng., vol. 533, May 2019, Art. no. 012017. the School of Electrical and Information Engi-
[8] S. A. Arshadi, M. Ordonez, W. Eberle, M. Craciun, and C. Botting, ‘‘Three- neering, Beijing University of Civil Engineering
phase LLC battery charger: Wide regulation and improved light-load and Architecture. His research interests include
operation,’’ IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 1519–1531,
motor drives, power electronics and power drives,
Feb. 2021.
pulse width mode converters, and microprocessor
[9] H.-N. Vu and W. Choi, ‘‘A novel dual full-bridge LLC resonant con-
verter for CC and CV charges of batteries for electric vehicles,’’ IEEE applications.
Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 65, no. 3, pp. 2212–2225, Mar. 2018, doi:
10.1109/TIE.2017.2739705.
[10] P. Zheng and J. Bauman, ‘‘High efficiency bidirectional LLC+C resonant
converter with parallel transformers for solar-charged electric vehicles,’’ YUFAN LIU was born in Beijing, China, in 1999.
IEEE Trans. Transp. Electrific., vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 1428–1442, Mar. 2023, She received the B.S. degree from Beijing Uni-
doi: 10.1109/TTE.2022.3199157. versity of Civil Engineering and Architecture,
[11] J.-P. He, J.-Y. Zhang, and H.-F. Ma, ‘‘Design of a bi-directional full bridge Beijing, in 2021, where she is currently pursuing
LLC resonant converter with a higher normalized voltage gain under the M.S. degree in electrical engineering.
backward mode,’’ in Proc. 19th Eur. Conf. Power Electron. Appl., Warsaw, Her research interests include modeling and
Poland, 2017, pp. 1–9, doi: 10.23919/EPE17ECCEEurope.2017.8098974. control of bidirectional dc–dc converters.
[12] J. Gao, J. Zhang, Q. Song, Z. Zhu, and L. Qian, ‘‘An LLC resonant
single-stage inverter with high-frequency link and soft-switching,’’ IEEE
J. Emerg. Sel. Topics Power Electron., vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 2959–2974,
Jun. 2022, doi: 10.1109/JESTPE.2021.3123345.
[13] H. Xun, H. Shen, and W. Chen, ‘‘Efficiency optimization strategy of LLC
resonant converter based on hybrid PWM and PFM digital control mode,’’
J. Phys., Conf., vol. 1941, no. 1, Jun. 2021, Art. no. 012023.
JIARAN ZHANG received the Ph.D. degree from
[14] U. Mumtahina and P. J. Wolfs, ‘‘Multimode optimization of the phase- the Department of Information and Electrical
shifted LLC series resonant converter,’’ IEEE Trans. Power Electron., Engineering, China Agricultural University. She
vol. 33, no. 12, pp. 10478–10489, Dec. 2018. is currently a Lecturer with the School of Elec-
[15] T. Zhu, F. Zhuo, F. Zhao, F. Wang, H. Yi, and T. Zhao, ‘‘Optimization of trical and Information Engineering, Beijing Uni-
extended phase-shift control for full-bridge CLLC resonant converter with versity of Civil Engineering and Architecture. Her
improved light-load efficiency,’’ IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 35, research interests include sensors and detection
no. 10, pp. 11129–11142, Oct. 2020, doi: 10.1109/TPEL.2020.2978419. techniques for food freshness.
[16] M. Saadati and A. Ghayebloo, ‘‘A new detailed loss model and design
approach for LLC resonant converter with phase shift control to overall
optimization of converter loss at whole battery charging process,’’ Int. J.
Circuit Theory Appl., vol. 50, no. 11, pp. 3763–3787, Nov. 2022.
[17] Y. Zhou, X. He, and L. Sheng, ‘‘Full-bridge resonant converter with hybrid
control for wide input voltage range applications,’’ J. Power Electron., HONGWEI ZHAO received the B.S. degree
vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 269–281, Jan. 2021. in electrical and information engineering from
[18] B. Xue, H. Wang, J. Liang, Q. Cao, and Z. Li, ‘‘Phase-shift modulated Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Archi-
interleaved LLC converter with ultrawide output voltage range,’’ IEEE tecture, Beijing, China, in 2022, where she is
Trans. Power Electron., vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 493–503, Jan. 2021. currently pursuing the M.S. degree in electrical
[19] Z. Hu, Y. Qiu, L. Wang, and Y.-F. Liu, ‘‘An interleaved LLC resonant engineering.
converter operating at constant switching frequency,’’ IEEE Trans. Power Her research interests include dc–dc converters
Electron., vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 2931–2943, Jun. 2014. and electrical power systems.
[20] S. A. Arshadi, M. Ordonez, M. Mohammadi, and W. Eberle, ‘‘Efficiency
improvement of three-phase LLC resonant converter using phase shed-
ding,’’ in Proc. IEEE Energy Convers. Congr. Expo. (ECCE), Cincinnati,
OH, USA, Oct. 2017, pp. 3771–3775.
[21] L. Shi, B. Liu, and S. Duan, ‘‘Burst-mode and phase-shift hybrid control
method of LLC converters for wide output range applications,’’ IEEE JIN YANG received the B.S. degree in electrical
Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 67, no. 2, pp. 1013–1023, Feb. 2020. and information engineering from Beijing Uni-
[22] S. Zhao, J. Xu, and O. Trescases, ‘‘Burst-mode resonant LLC converter for versity of Civil Engineering and Architecture,
an LED luminaire with integrated visible light communication for smart Beijing, China, in 2022, where she is currently
buildings,’’ IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 29, no. 8, pp. 4392–4402, pursuing the M.S. degree in electrical engineering.
Aug. 2014. Her research interests include sensors and electri-
[23] N. Shafiei, M. Ordonez, M. Craciun, C. Botting, and M. Edington, ‘‘Burst cal power systems.
mode elimination in high-power LLC resonant battery charger for electric
vehicles,’’ IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 1173–1188,
Feb. 2016.

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