In this paper, two light-load efficiency improvement methods are presented and applied to the ultrahigh step-down converter. The two methods are both based on skip mode control. Skip Mode 1 only needs one half-bridge driver integrated circuit (IC) to drive three switches, so it has the advantages of easy signal control and lower cost, whereas Skip Mode 2 requires one half-bridge driver integrated circuit IC, one common ground driver IC, and three independent timing pulse-width-modulated (PWM) signals to control three switches, so the cost is higher and the control signals are more complicated, but Skip Mode 2 can obtain slightly higher light-load efficiency than Skip Mode 1. Although the switching frequency used in these methods are reduced, the transferred energy is unchanged, but the output voltage ripple is influenced to some extent.
A power efficiency improvement technique for a bi-directional dual active bridge DC-DC converter at light load