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Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Information Engineering "Guglielmo Marconi" - DEI

Seminar: Communication meets power: the new frontiers of switched mode power supplies

The seminar will be given by Stefano Bocchi and Nicola Bertoni, University of Ferrara, as part of the course "Elettronica per l'elaborazione analogica del segnale".

  • Date: 27 November 2015 from 10:00 to 13:00

  • Event location: Room A1, via Rasi e Spinelli 176, Cesena

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About the speakers

Stefano Bocchi received both B.S. (2010) and M.S. (2013, magna cum laude) degrees in Electronic and Communication Engineering from the University of Ferrara, Italy. He is actually working as a consultant at Alstom Ltd., where his activities mainly concern assistance on the railway transportation management system.

Nicola Bertoni received both B.S. (2010, cum laude) and M.S. (2013, magna cum laude) degrees in Electronic and Communication Engineering from the University of Ferrara, Italy. He is currently performing research as a PhD student at the University of Ferrara on innovative architectures and and design methodologies for high-frequency power conversion and Compressed Sensing based power-efficient acquisition of biological signals.

 

Abstract

Modern applications ask for electronic systems having an increased integration of new features while containing both their size and cost. Sometimes simply adding dedicated electronic circuitry addressing the new functionalities doesn’t represent the best way to approach this trade-off. The key idea behind this seminar is to explore an innovative point of view rethinking about two worlds that have always been considered as completely separated: power conversion/distribution and data communication.

Firstly we consider a simple and low-cost Power Line Communication (PLC) system based on ripple frequency modulation directly on the power bus suitable for advanced led lighting systems. In the second part of the seminar, we explore the new architectures for high-frequency (miniaturized) power converters and, particularly the class-E DC-DC resonant topologies. In this case, the introduction of a novel design methodology enables a best exploration of the entire design space which ultimately leads to the possibility to implement an almost-zero-cost backward communication channel. Both these works have been supported by TEXAS INSTRUMENTS and many thesis projects are available both at the University of Bologna and at the University of Ferrara.