EMI characterization and communication aspects for power electronics in hybrid vehicles

paper deals with the EMI (electromagnetic interference) characterization and the communication aspects for the power electronics hardware devoted to control the traction power flows in hybrid vehicles. The power conversion system related to the particular vehicle generation and storage units will be analyzed from both the functional (control and communication) and EMI point of view. The control structure and the communication architecture will be described and the use of a bus- multiplexed structure for the communication interface between the power converters has been investigated. In particular the CAN (controller area network) standard has been selected in order to evaluate the achieved improvement in efficiency. An extensive experimental test campaign (conducted emission) is carried out in order to evaluate the overall EMI performance of the single power converter and, in particular, to estimate which is the contribution to the system emission levels due to auxiliaries as the control platform and the related electronic boards (measures acquisition, filtering, driving circuits and power supply distribution network).