Decentralized Power Management for Multi-active Bridge Converter

Multi-active bridge (MAB) converter has played an important role in the power conversion of renewable-based smart grids, electrical vehicles, and more/all electrical aircraft. However, the increase of MAB submodules greatly complicates the control architecture. In this regard, the conventional centralized control strategies, which rely on a single controller to process all the information, will be limited by the computation burden. To overcome this issue, this paper proposes a decentralized power management strategy for MAB converter. The switching frequencies of MAB submodules are adaptively regulated based on the submodule local information. Through this effort, flexible electrical power routing can be realized without communications among submodules. The proposed methodology not only relieves the computation burden of MAB control system, but also improves its modularity, flexibility, and expandability. Finally, the experiment results of a three-module MAB converter are presented for verification.