Integrating Power Electronic System in Space Application: Limitation due to a Harsh Environment

Power management in 'ground' application is fasting moving to integration of different function in a monolithic block or few building blocks, by new packaging technologies. Scope of new packaging technologies is primarily to increase power density and reduce labour intensive (and therefore costly) production (which is typical for conventional discrete production) while saving or improving other system performances (Reliability, EMC and so on). Integration can, in principle, reduce the lengths of interconnections and the relevant parasitics element, reducing switching loss, voltage overshoot on switching devices and electromagnetic interference emission. Lower parasitics, on the other hand, greatly improve the EMI filter performances especially at high frequency. The above needs are, of course, applicable also to space power electronic system, the space business, however, have some particular attributes that should be taken into account. This paper describes an innovative packaging technology of low power, multi-output hybrid DC/DC converter for space application, to cope with demanding environment and reliability requirements.