Single-Fiber Combined Optical Power and Data Transmission for High-Voltage Applications

Abstract

In this paper, power-over-fiber technology is used for combined power and data transfer applying amplitudemodulated light representing a pulse-width modulated signal that could be used for control of, for instance, power semiconductor devices in high-power converters. Even though the concept is generally applicable, an experimental verification aiming for a gatedriver of a switch in a modular multilevel converter is presented. In order to achieve a good resilience against electromagnetic noise, a concept where the modulated light is demodulated as a comparably powerful current signal is employed. A 5 MHz boost converter steps up the voltage to 15-20 V, such that silicon or silicon-carbide based power devices could be controlled. From the results, it can be concluded that it is possible to achieve transmission of a control signal with a latency of less than 500 ns for a gate drive unit of a high-power converter. The concept can easily be scaled up to powers of several watt.

Auxiliary Power Supplies for High-Power Converter Submodules: State of the Art and Future Prospects

“…The small gate capacitance of SiC devices promises reduced power consumption in the gate-drive circuit when compared to established technology based on silicon transistors [20]. In [21], it is found that a comparably low gate-drive power consumption is necessary for MMCs with silicon IGBTs or SiC power devices, mainly because of the low switching frequency of an MMC. For switching frequencies below 1 kHz the power consumption is well below 1 W. SiC JFET-based supercascodes [22]- [25] feature especially low gate-drive power consumption because a single low-voltage (LV) MOSFET at the bottom of the series chain controls the entire series switch.…”

“…POF technology is particularly interesting for future MV SiC MOSFETs, as presented in [80], offering a high isolation capacitance and potentially a small footprint. Different implementations of an POF-based APS for MMC submodules are suggested in [21]. Charging of multiple devices is possible by additionally introducing optical elements to manipulate and control the light beam, e.g., splitters [81].…”

“…As regards HV applications, there is also a general concern in relation to reliability, especially for high-power POF systems. Recently, such reliability issues have been addressed in [21] together with power and data transmission requirements. As mentioned before, POF technology offers superior noise immunity [6].…”

Development of long‐distance power supply system with high power laser over single mode fiber

“…4 The technology of longdistance power supply with high-power laser (HPL) over single-mode fiber (SMF) is a form of PoF technology, which is of great significance in specific environment. 5 With the increasing demand of optical fiber remote power applications, the laser power injected into the optical fiber is higher and higher, [6][7][8] and the transmission distance is also farther and farther. 9,10 High voltage transmission line remote monitoring system power supply is just such one example.…”

Optically Powered Gas Monitoring System Using Single-Mode Fibre for Underground Coal Mines

“…In 1995, PoF was introduced for gas monitoring in underground coal mine using 5 W light source before the establishment of explosion hazardous standard for fibre-optic equipment (Dubaniewicz and Chilton 1995). The technology has been further applied to other industries such as telecommunication (Vázquez et al 2019;Wake et al 2008;Xu et al 2010) and electric utilities, where high voltage and high current sensors are powered and read optically (Heinig et al 2020;Bassan et al 2021). Other low power consumption industrial sensors such as temperature sensor (Budelmann 2018), pressure sensor and proximity sensor (López-Cardona et al 2018) using PoF technologies have demonstrated significant advantages over their electrical counterparts.…”