APEC 2006 features 18 professional education seminars with a broad range of topics. The conference committee has worked hard to make sure there is something of interest to all APEC attendees during each of the seminar time periods. As always, APEC seminars offer a practical mix of theory and application for the professional working in power electronics. Unlike other conferences that charge by the seminar, at APEC one low fee gains you access to any and all of the seminars, along with the notes for every seminar. Whether you want to review an important topic area, broaden your understanding of a neighboring discipline, or take advantage of the practical experience of experts in the field, the APEC 2006 seminars are a must for every conference attendee.

Please note that the room assignments are tentative and subject to change. Please check with the registration desk at the conference for the latest information.

Professional Education Seminar Descriptions

Robert V. White, Artesyn Technologies
Reunion Ballroom GH
Sunday, March 19, 9:30 AM - 1:00 PM

Digital control, today's hot topic, actually has two aspects. One is the real-time, cycle-by cycle control of the switching in a power converter. The other aspect is non-real-time system management - configuring, controlling, and monitoring a power system. Digital power system management has been around for many years. However, the recent widespread adoption of the intermediate bus architecture with its multiple dc-dc converters on each circuit board has also created the need for an efficient way to manage those converters. Digital power management is being rapidly adopted to answer that need. This seminar reviews the fundamentals of digital power system management for the entry-level to intermediate power system user or designer. The first part of the seminar describes the various functions and features that are possible with digital power management. Along the way, seminar attendees are reminded that it is easy to become enamored of the "wow" factor. Instead, the attendee is reminded to ask "What does my system need?" and "How would this feature bring value to my customer?" The next section of the seminar discusses protocols and in some depth, data communications issues for power system management. Poor implementation of data communications buses is the single biggest source of problems when people implement digital power system management. Several of the most common problems are identified and suggestions for avoiding them given. The second half of the seminar delves more deeply into the actual features and functions that are possible in a digital power management system. Functions such a setting the output voltage, on/off control, fault detections, and reporting are treated in some details. Tradeoffs and limitations are pointed out and recommended implementations given.

Michael Schutten, GE Global Research Center
Landmark Ballroom D
Sunday, March 19, 9:30 AM - 1:00 PM

This seminar is intended as a comprehensive introduction for engineers wishing to obtain a fundamental understanding of EMI issues associated with switch-mode power converters, and experienced engineers desiring a detailed understanding of electromagnetic interference (EMI) causes and fixes for power converters. The seminar begins with an introduction to noise coupling mechanisms and their properties. The concept of impedance mismatch is presented as a basis for understanding filtering concepts. Differential-mode (DM) and common-mode (CM) separation and filtering approaches are derived, and measurement and separation techniques presented. DM & CM measurement and EMI reduction techniques are presented for an experimental flyback converter. Converter layout techniques and principles are derived, and experimentally verified. The seminar provides an emphasis on how DM and CM currents are created in power converters, and layout and construction techniques to minimize the need for costly filtering. Several practical EMI reduction techniques and construction methods are provided throughout the presentation.

James Kokernak, Advanced Energy Conversion
Landmark Ballroom A
Sunday, March 19, 9:30 AM - 1:00 PM

This seminar is intended for those who are relatively new to the field of power electronics or could use a refresher course. The seminar is presented in four parts: distinguishing features of power electronics, circuit analysis examples, control techniques, and practical issues. The attendee should leave with an understanding and an appreciation for the underlying principles of power electronics, thereby enabling either more effective project management or increased comprehension in more advanced seminars and technical sessions.

Ernie Wittenbreder, Technical Witts
Landmark Ballroom B
Sunday, March 19, 9:30 AM - 1:00 PM

With new mandates and standards for energy efficiency, the need for power supply designers to understand the new requirements, high efficiency design options, and the available trade offs is imperative. This seminar describes new and existing mandates and regulations for energy efficiency (no-load, maintenance, standby, and active-on). Loss mechanisms that contribute to poor efficiency in power supplies are described in detail. Most of the seminar is focused on providing practical in-depth information that the power supply designer can use to meet and exceed the new efficiency standards and mandates. Information is provided on topology selection and circuits and techniques that yield higher efficiencies. Soft switching circuits and the problems and practical solutions associated with these circuits are described, and the differences in the design optimization processes for hard switching and soft switching converters are described. Other topics are synchronous rectifiers, burst mode generation, and bridgeless PFC boost converters. This seminar is intended for intermediate and advanced level power supply engineers who want a better understanding of the practical tradeoffs and design issues associated with high efficiency power conversion and practical ideas for accomplishing high efficiency power conversion.

Shmuel Ben-Yaakov, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Reunion Ballroom F
Sunday, March 19, 9:30 AM - 1:00 PM

Although piezoelectricity was discovered about 100 years ago, piezoelectric elements (PE) only recently became a practical alternative in some power conversion applications. In a number of applications, the piezoelectric approach was shown to have a clear advantage over alternative solutions. In other applications, piezoelectric elements will clearly be a preferred choice if and when their price is lowered. Notwithstanding the relative simple structure of piezoelectric elements, the design of the power electronics circuitry associated with them is far from being simple or trivial. The objective of this seminar is to introduce the attendees to PE technology from the power electronics point of view. This will be accomplished by first reviewing the models of native PE devices, including when they are loaded by rectifiers and mechanical loads. This overview will then be used in the presentation of drivers and rectifiers. Finally, the seminar will address some specific problems that haunt designers, such as the issue of instability that may develop when a PE drives fluorescent lamps. The seminar is at the intermediate level intended for active workers in the field as well as for novices who wish to learn about PE and their applications.

Arefeen Mohammed, Texas Instruments
Pegasus Ballroom
Sunday, March 19, 9:30 AM - 1:00 PM

As motor drive systems evolve with advanced features (sensorless operation, vector control, etc.), motor drive designers are relying more and more on advanced digital controllers and the extensive suite of motor-control focused hardware and software solutions to help them get their designs to market faster with more customized features and better performance for virtually any type of motor. A hurdle often faced by system developers working with a digital controller is determining how and where to get started, both from the software and hardware points of view. A good example system that illustrates the software and hardware configurations can be invaluable for any motor drive design engineer. The goal of this seminar is to go through every step necessary to build a digital controller based motor drive system. The seminar will provide general examples which can be applied to wide range digital controllers. The attendees of this seminar will gain in depth knowledge about the following topics:

1. The benefits of a digital controller in a motor drive system.
2. How to create modular software strategy for the ease of system implementation.
3. How to obtain maximum accuracy from a fixed point controller instead of using floating point device.
4. The tricks to obtain maximum benefit from "C" code without device cycle penalties.
5. How to use incremental system build process to minimize system "bugs".
6. Complete system example showing a BLDC drive written in "C".

This seminar is targeted for system software and hardware engineers with intermediate to advanced experience.

Dragan Maksimovic and Regan Zane; University of Colorado, Boulder
Landmark Ballroom B
Sunday, March 19, 2:30 - 6:00 PM

The purpose of the seminar is to introduce practical digital controller design and implementation techniques for high-frequency switching power converters. Starting from standard analog controller architectures and design principles, sampling effects and the basics of discrete-time analysis and modeling in the time and frequency domains are introduced. Examples are used to illustrate simple digital compensator design techniques, as well as characterization, selection, and implementation of A/D converters and digital modulators. Quantization effects and limit-cycling issues are also discussed. Details of an FPGA development platform for digital control will be discussed together with experimental results. Knowledge of basic converter operation and standard analog controller design will be assumed.

Roger Stout, ON Semiconductor
Landmark Ballroom D
Sunday, March 19, 2:30 - 6:00 PM

This three-part, half-day seminar is designed for entry- to mid-level electronics system engineers who are reasonably comfortable with Microsoft® Excel. The first part will introduce the overall approach to semiconductor device thermal characterization. Pitfalls in the use and misuse of typically published semiconductor device thermal data will be discussed. The second part will focus on the principle of linear superposition as applied to thermal system design. The goal is to provide the attendee with sufficient understanding to construct and use relatively simple spreadsheet-based tools in real-life system thermal designs. In the process, the following points will be covered: how to correctly utilize published thermal data in a system level thermal model, how to predict actual operating temperatures of the significant power devices, how to predict the operating temperatures of low power but temperature sensitive devices, and how this approach may be used in conjunction with more sophisticated thermal analysis tools. The third section will be an in-depth presentation of a specific and highly non-linear thermal failure mechanism, thermal runaway, whence it arises and how it may be analyzed. The focus will be within the particular context of power semiconductor devices, but it should also become evident how the concept may be applied more generally.

Randy Malik, IBM
Landmark Ballroom A
Sunday, March 19, 2:30 - 6:00 PM

This seminar is designed for those who are involved in sales, marketing, design, and manufacturing of power products. The presentation shall cover best techniques of procurement and qualification of products not necessarily limited to power products only. In the past, the role of a procurement organization was limited to buying OEM products, and therefore had no value add to the bottom line of a corporation. The popular joke in the hallways used to be, "an engineer with talent need not apply for this job." The world of today is quite different, and the role of procurement has changed from a support organization to that of a core organization. In this new global world of outsourcing, a procurement organization is responsible for procuring, qualifying hardware and software from outside the company, managing quality, and negotiating contracts. Have you heard about the gate keeper! This organization comes close to such a gate keeper. This organization is responsible for awarding a business contract and qualifying a supplier's product; it is very essential to understand how does it award the business? A supplier needs to understand the whole process to be successful in this environment. A unique feature of this seminar is that the speaker has a wide range of experience from research, design, advanced power technology, graphics memory, data processing and telecommunication to production procurement and qualification. The seminar is designed to review the basics of this emerging organization, and then step by step show how such an organization has transformed IBM in reducing cost and cycle times without sacrificing quality or proprietary technology. The techniques taught here are not necessarily applicable to one company or industry only, but could be applied to any industry. It is hoped that the attendee with the knowledge acquired during the session shall have a better appreciation of the changing world around them and could be a change agent for their company.

Dave Heacock, Yevgen Barsukov, and Jinrong Qian; Texas Instruments
Reunion Ballroom GH
Sunday, March 19, 2:30 - 6:00 PM

Battery management continues to be a significant issue for a wide range of portable products. The old questions of "which battery is best for my system," and "how can I make the system run longer with the battery" have plagued designers and users alike. This seminar addresses the issues surrounding battery management, and provides an overview of rechargeable battery technologies, operating characteristics, healthy treatment, charging and termination methods, and practical suggestions to maximize the use of the battery capacity. The first part of the presentation provides the battery electrical behavior under DC and transient conditions and reviews the battery general operating characteristics. Then we are going to overview different battery technologies including battery construction, operating electro-chemical mechanism, charging method, healthy treatment, safety protection and their main applications for Lead acid, Nickel Cadmium (NiCd), Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH), and Li-Ion batteries. The second part of the presentation is focused on the efficient charging algorithm, battery charging system architecture, interaction between system and charger for the Li-Ion battery. Power path management (PPM) technology is going to be presented to minimize the AC adapter power rating and size while charging the battery and supplying the system simultaneously for handheld and portable equipment. Several practical linear battery chargers, switching mode chargers, and their control integrated circuits (ICs) are going to be presented for cellular phones, MP3 players, DVD players, and laptop computers. The third part looks at understanding the changes in impedance over the service life of the battery. We are going to present the impedance track technology to accurately monitor the battery's remaining capacity and measure the battery impedance. Combined with an adaptive end of discharge voltage termination scheme, it can reduce the loss of run-time for a system as a battery ages. Examples and system run-time data will be shown. The fourth part of the seminar presents new battery chemistry development trends for meeting the challenge in power hungry and cost sensitive portable power equipment applications. This seminar is structured to provide in-depth coverage of the topics of the battery power management, and is intended for the audience from entry level to intermediate experience level.

Grigoriy Trestman, OSRAM Sylvania
Reunion Ballroom F
Sunday, March 19, 2:30 - 6:00 PM

Broad classes of AC, DC, and pulsed loads such as fluorescent and HID lamps, gas and diode lasers, LEDs, pulsed lasers and lamps, and capacitor and battery chargers require power supplies with the output characteristics of a current or power source. Power supplies with such characteristics are called electrical ballasts. Despite a large number of publications, aspects of electrical ballast design are not reflected systematically in the technical literature. This seminar covers all aspects of electrical ballast design from basic definitions and passive current limiting to the design principles of multi-kilowatts voltage to current source converters. Seminar topics include:

• Electrical characteristics of ballasts and electrical loads requiring ballasting for operation.
• Passive and active methods of creating converters with the characteristics of current or power sources.
• Optimal configurations of the ballasts for AC, DC, and Pulsed loads.
• High-frequency switch mode ballast design including soft switching and non-dissipative snubbers.
• Low and high power ballast design and paralleling converter modules for power increase.
• Simple and precision control in electrical ballasts for AC, DC, and pulsed loads.
• Different methods of power factor correction.
• Methods of gas discharge ignition and igniter topologies.

The topics will be treated as a survey, and the level of the intended audience is entry to intermediate.

Mark Ehsani, Texas A&M University
Pegasus Ballroom
Sunday, March 19, 2:30 - 6:00 PM

The Brushless DC (BLDC) motor drive system is one of the most popular advanced motor drives. High power density, very compact geometry, and high efficiency, along with simple control are among the main attractions for replacing many adjustable speed applications with this technology. The BLDC machine is now mature and increasingly used in automotive, military, traction, aerospace, industrial, and consumer products. In this short course, which is for practicing engineers as well as advanced researchers, we will address in detail the basics of the BLDC machine, comparing its features with those of other machines, its control strategies, and conventional sensorless control techniques. Moreover, advanced BLDC machine control topics including our novel sensorless position detection technique based on a new physical concept will be presented. Advanced controls are used for improving reliability in case of sensor failure and to maximize the power density, efficiency, and minimize the size and weight of the BLDC generator. The course will end with a discussion of BLDC machine drive application trends.

José Cobos, Oscar Garcia, Angel de Castro, and Andres Soto; Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Landmark Ballroom B
Monday, March 20, 8:30 AM - Noon

The seminar illustrates the use of digital control in four different applications: power factor pre-regulation, multi-phase dc-dc conversion for automotive dual voltage (14/42 V) applications, power supplies for RF amplifiers, and integrated dc-dc converters with dynamic voltage Scaling for low power microprocessors. The talk is structured in five sections. It begins with the motivation to keep an eye on digital control and its evolving possibilities. Then, hardware issues are pointed out to identify the actual possibilities, limitations, and basic parameters of the digital technologies and building blocks. Specific design issues are then analyzed in detail, pointing out different design alternatives and providing solutions for the critical points to meet the specifications in the design of the control loop, the digital PWM, ADCs...., etc. In the fourth section, the tools, procedures, and test setup to simulate and implement digital control are illustrated. Finally, an overall assessment of the results obtained in these four specific applications illustrates some of the reasons why digital control may be used or discarded in actual products. This seminar is intended for experienced power supply designers interested in being acquainted with the merits and limitations of digital control, derived from some specific examples.

Doug Hopkins, State University of New York
Pegasus Ballroom
Monday, March 20, 8:30 AM - Noon

This seminar targets the experienced power electronics designer and provides a comprehensive description of leading and next-generation advanced packaging techniques for supplies, drives and derivatives, emphasizing high-current, high-temperature applications. Higher temperature (above 150 °C) is possible for a host of active and passive components provided a suitable packaging environment is used. Many high-current, high-density circuits can become much denser if advanced techniques are used to significantly improve thermal management. An update is given on lead-free soldering issues and how designs are impacted by component availability and compatibility. Recent results in electro- and thermo-migration testing will show the impact on reliability, and how new design rules are needed for electrically and thermally dense designs. Attributes, processes and design rules for packaging techniques, such as multilayered heavy-copper pre-preg, copper-on-ceramic, and graphite and AlSiC composites, are presented. Devices, such as SiC diodes and transistors, and passives, are reviewed. Designers will gain necessary information to consider and select alternate packaging techniques that optimally meet their needs for inclusion of higher temperature components. This is an essential course for designers who must look at alternate packaging design approaches to further shrink their electronics. The material is co-presented from electrical, thermal and physical perspectives. The seminar is intended for the advanced electrical design engineer.

Dorin Neacsu
Reunion Ballroom F
Monday, March 20, 8:30 AM - Noon

This seminar is directed to young power electronics specialists eager to embrace a career in the power electronics industry. All the information about markets, business language, theories of innovation, and technology trends is provided to arm the attendee with everything they need to know to be successful in a business endeavor in power electronics.

Gerald Deboy, Lutz Gorgens and Jon Hancock; Infineon Technologies
Landmark Ballroom D
Monday, March 20, 8:30 AM - Noon

This seminar will deal with the role of modern power semiconductor devices as enabling technology for highest efficiency power supplies. Focusing on server and telecom AC/DC applications as a major market place for sophisticated system solutions, the seminar will discuss the required changes in system architecture and semiconductor usage to keep pace with ever more demanding power and form factor requirements. Typically the output power of a given server or telecom power supply has to increase by 20% per year at constant cost and size. These requirements drive the efficiency needs continuously further up to meet thermal management demands. We will discuss in detail power factor correction including bridgeless boost approaches based on one-cycle control, one and two stage approaches for the main power conversion and synchronous rectification. The power devices used include boost diodes, high and low voltage MOSFETs plus the respective controllers. With the market entry of very low ohmic high and low voltage MOSFETs and practically zero reverse recovery diodes, the pre-requisites for lean, no-fuss power architectures are available. Furthermore, semiconductor manufacturers endeavor to make devices fast switching and easy to drive. The energy stored in the output capacitance and reverse recovery charge is also kept at a minimum. We will show that hard switching applications can draw most benefit out of these devices. The seminar will furthermore discuss pros and cons of hard switching versus zero voltage or zero current switching power architectures. New ideas such as bridgeless boost power factor correction and current results are also addressed. The seminar targets design engineers of power supplies from the entry to experienced levels.

Richard Redl, ELFI S.A. and Gabor Reizik, Analog Devices
Landmark Ballroom A
Monday, March 20, 8:30 AM - Noon

Powering a microprocessor is a challenging task. The power supply or VRM (voltage regulator module) must produce a high output current at a low output voltage with high efficiency and accuracy, and maintain the high efficiency over a wide range of output currents, especially in notebook applications. Additionally, the VRM must respond to a load transient without excessive under- or overshoots, have a prescribed output resistance (this feature is also called "adaptive voltage positioning"), be able to accept static and on-the-fly digital programming, and have small size and low cost. This seminar starts with a brief summary of the VRM specifications for modern microprocessors, then presents an overview of the most important power converter topologies (including the single-phase and multi-phase buck converter and their extensions, add-on circuits for fast load transient response, and non-isolated and isolated multi-stage solutions), and continues with a discussion of the single-loop and multi-loop analog and digital voltage regulation techniques. The seminar concludes with the review of the various voltage positioning methods, feedback loop design considerations, and auxiliary control functions (controlling for high efficiency at light load, maintaining current/thermal balance, and overcurrent and overvoltage protection).

Victor Quinn, Tabtronics
Reunion Ballroom GH
Monday, March 20, 8:30 AM - Noon

Prediction of transformer loss and energy has been a frequent topic in literature. Nevertheless, there is continued widespread interest in more intuitive transformer design methods for high frequency power electronic applications. This seminar introduces normalized concepts of loss and energy density which yield powerful and intuitive transformer design shortcuts to determine optimal configurations for a specific application. Transformer fundamentals will be presented from the perspectives of circuit designer, transformer assembler, and transformer designer. Normalized functions will be discussed to introduce basic design optimization techniques. Empirical testing methods will be reviewed to establish objective measures of transformer function. High frequency effects will be considered using the concept of normalized loss and energy density functions. The concept of an equivalent winding thickness will be introduced with graphical depiction of optimization strategies. The equivalent winding thickness concept will be extended to power supply applications involving nonsinusoidal excitation. Normalized parameters will be used to rapidly estimate resultant loss and energy for selected transformers in a variety of high frequency power electronic applications. Empirical testing methods will be extended to address nonsinusoidal conditions. This detailed consideration of expert design shortcuts will benefit intermediate level designers who are looking for more intuitive transformer design methods.