Computationally Efficient Simulation-based Sensitivity Analysis Method for Power Electronic Circuits

Abstract

In a proper circuit design procedure, it is important to consider the performance of a circuit when its elements are expected to vary from their nominal values due to various internal and external factors. Performing a sensitivity analysis on circuit provides deep insight to such a requirement. The conventional sensitivity analysis methods catering power electronic circuits need lengthy and computationally demanding simulation effort when the circuit is complex and the number of circuit elements involved is large. This thesis presents a computationally efficient sensitivity analysis method which utilizes the salient feature of network-based sensitivity analysis methods, i.e. less simulation effort. To overcome the applicability limitations of network-based methods on complex power electronic circuits, the proposed method performs sensitivity analysis on linearized average model of the circuit instead of its original circuit. The resulting sensitivities derived from proposed method were validated against those derived from a conventional method.