Design and evaluation of an input active EMI filter for integrated power electronics modules1
Chen Wenjie Yang Xu Wang Zhaoan
Abstract－In recent years there has been considerable interest
in the development and applications of active filters. By a
comparative study of active power filter and active EMI filter,
the possibility of using active filter technique in the integrated
power electronics modules (IPEM) has been analyzed in detail.
An active EMI filter for IPEM is proposed in this paper, which
consists of a wide bandwidth current transformer, liner
amplifier circuit and high frequency current feed-in network.
The relationship between the compensation performance and
gain is investigated, based on its two-port T network model.
And the steady state characteristic curve is obtained.
Considering the wide bandwidth feature of the EMI noise, the
high frequency simplified model of the current transformer is
established. The effective method to improve its bandwidth is
well discussed. Simulation analysis and experiment results
showed that, the developed active EMI filter gives satisfactory
performance in noise compensation characteristics.
I． INTRODUCTION
Since the Center of Power Electronics System (CPES)
introduced the concept of power electronics building block
(PEBB) and system integration, more and more engineers
accepted the new idea. According to CPES, the integrated
power electronics module (IPEM) is firstly divided into four
cells---input filter, active module, passive module and
output filter. Based upon the different types of IPEMs, the
large-scale integrated system is constructed as shown in
Fig.1.
Active module
Input filter Passive module
Integrated power electronics
module（IPEM）
(a) Integrated module
AC/DC
Gen.
IPEM
DC/DC
AC/DC
IPEM
Gen. IPEM
DC/AC
Motor
IPEM
DC power distribution Bus
(b) Integrated system
Fig.1 The concept of PEBB and system integration
1 This paper was supported by national Nature Science Foundation
of China, project no. 50237030
0-7803-9033-4/05/$20.00 ©2005 IEEE.
School of Electrical Engineering
Xi’an Jiaotong University
710049 Xi’an, Shaanxi, P.R.China
cwj@mail.xjtu.edu.cn
On the way of integration, the input filter--- one of the
basic cells of the IPEM--- is also faced with the challenge of
both reducing size and optimizing function. Because on the
one hand, there is a contradictory between the urgent need
of increasing power density as well as decreasing
electromagnetic interference (EMI) of the IPEM. On the
other hand, the EMI noise generated by one IPEM could
influence the other IPEMs that placed in the same integrated
system through either conducted or radiated which, in turn,
make the system undependable and less durable.
Nowadays, a representative method is the planar
integrated passive EMI filter technology proposed by
CPES[1-2]. But the parasitic parameters couldn’t be estimated
very accurately. What’s more, the material of the magnetic
core actually limits the further application of the integrated
L-C structure. As a whole, the passive filter has the
following disadvantages: (1) As the compensating
bandwidth is comparatively narrow, only a certain part of
noise can be eliminated. (2) Resonance might occur when
the impedance or frequency of the system changed. (3)
Nearly one third of the IPEM’s volume is occupied by the
EMI filter because of its large size.
This paper firstly introduces the concept of active EMI
filter (AEF) to the design of IPEM. By a comparative study
of active power filter (APF) and AEF, the possibility of
using active filter technique in the IPEM has been analyzed
in detail. Simulation analysis and experimental results
confirm the proposed AEF has a good performance.
Output filter
II. A COMPARISON BETWEEN APF AND AEF
The basic idea of active filter has been known for some
time [3-7]. Fig.2 illustrates the principle and classification of
AEF. According to the circuit configuration and connections,
the active EMI filters are classified as parallel AEF and
DC/AC
3-ph
series AEF. To reduce the complexity of the AEF, there is
IPEM
power
supply
also hybrid passive/active EMI filter. All of those
characteristics are the same with that of the active power
filter.
Source current Load current
Load
supply is il＝in＋is
nonlinear
vs
load
cancellation
current
ic＝-in
am plifier sense
A ctive E M I filter (A E F)
(a) Basic concept
309
 is
Z
avoid instability the loop gain must be restricted at high
ic＝-in il＝is vc＝vn frequency, resulting in limited noise attenuation.
vs Z in vs vn
i1 i2

1:n R3 i3
R1 R4
Zs
(b) Parallel configuration (c) Series configuration R2
u1
Fig.2 Generalized block diagram and configuration for active EMI filter R2 A C1
in
C3
Vs
u2
On the other hand, there are great differences between R3
C2

the AEF and APF, which include the following:

(1) Noise frequency---the frequency of the harmonic
current in APF is below 9kHz while the EMI spectrum of (a) Topology of active EMI filter
the noise is from 150kHz to 30MHz according to the EMC
standard CISPR22 class B.
iq in
(2) Power rating---according to [8], low power
application of the APF refers to those power lower than ic
100KVA while the high power application of the APF means output port feedback inputport
that power greater than 10MVA. In short, the power rating （quietport）
F
（noisy port）
of the APF is so much great. As for the AEF, the power is
very small. Consider the CISPR22 class B, and suppose that
the attenuation on the LISN is 60dBμV. The power is only (b) Equivalent two-port T network model
Fig.3 Topology of active EMI filter and the equivalent circuit
0.2μW.
(3) Implementation of the controlled voltage or current
In this filter circuit, the injected current cannot be
source---since the power rating of the APF is very high, so
circulated within the closed loop without using the coupling
much attention is paid to the efficiency of the utility. To
capacitor C1 because the closed loop cannot be made. Thus
increase the efficiency, it is necessary to use the switching
C1 is used to provide the low-impedance path of the high
mode. While the power rating of the AEF is very small, it is
frequency noise current for the internal circulation. In this
not need to use switching mode. The linear mode is enough.
analysis there is an assumption that coupling capacitor has
Therefore, it is entirely feasible to utilize the active
sufficiently low impedance at the frequency band of interest.
EMI filter in the design of the input EMI module of the
The transfer function according to the block diagram of the
IPEMs to restrain the EMI noise.
feedback as shown in Fig.4 (a) is
s
III. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE AEF (s + ω1 )( + 1)
iq ω2
A. Active circuit realization = （2）
in 1 2 ω
s + (1 + 1 + k1k2 )s + ω1
The active topology in this work is shown in Fig. 3 (a). ω2 ω2
The inverting amplifier sense the voltage across the resistor Fig.4 (b) shows the frequency response of the AEF without
and drives a proportional voltage across its low output including the effect of coupling capacitor.
impedance, thereby diverting the noise current away from
the power source. Ideally, with infinite gain, the negative in iq
feedback would drive the input voltage, and hence the noise 1 s
current to zero. ic 1/R 4 1 + s ω2 R1 s + ω1
u2 u1 i1
A two-port T network model will explain the K2 K1
operational principle more clearly as shown in Fig.3 (b). In
an ideal filter, the noise current iq at the quiet port would be (a) Block diagram of control system
zero. Thus the whole of the unwanted noise current in at the
noisy port would be diverted down to the vertical leg of the
T port and back to the noisy port. To this end a cancellation
current ic＝in should be generated in the vertical leg. In
reality ic does not mach in exactly, so the quiet port current iq
＝ in － ic is non-zero. The closed-loop current transfer
function can be found as
iq 1
= （1）
in 1+ F
For good noise attenuation the current gains of the (b) Close-loop frequency response
feedback F should be as large as possible. In practice, to Fig.4 Block diagram of control system and the frequency response

310
B. Current transformer
The measurement of currents in EMI domains makes
necessary the use of current transformer with a very wide
frequency bandwidth and without distortion. An elementary
structure based on a toroidal current transformer, a winding
and a resistor load is used in this paper. A simplified
equivalent circuit of the current transformer is shown in
Fig.5.
R
Lµ
E lectrostatic
shield
(a) Toroidal current transformer (b) Low frequency model
Fig.5 Current transformer and the Low frequency equivalent circuit
The low cutoff frequency is expressed by
Rl （3）
fL =
2πn µ0 µ r Ae
2
Ae is the area of the magnetic circuit, l is the effective length
of the core, andμr is reversible permeability. To improve fl,
it is necessary to increase n and to have large Ae, a short l,
and a high-permeability magnetic material.
Since the frequency of the EMI noise is as high as
30MHz, it is necessary to explain the high frequency
comportment. Fig.6 (a) shows the high frequency equivalent
circuit of the current transformer[9]. L1 and L2 is the primary
and secondary leakage inductance respectively, C1 and C2 is
the primary and secondary winding capacitance respectively,
Lμ is the magnetizing transformer inductance, Cm1 and Cm2
is the primary and secondary interwinding capacitance.
Cm1
Ii L1
Lµ
C1
1:n
(a) High frequency equivalent circuit
Ii sL1 sL'2 = sL2 / n 2
1 n 2
1 1
=
sC1' s(C1 + Cm1 )
sC2' s(C2 + Cm 2 )
(b) High frequency simplified model
Fig.6 High frequency equivalent circuit and the
simplified model of current transformer
Although the interwinding capacitance has a great
influence on the frequency response, the electrostatic shield
will divide the capacitance into Cm1 and Cm2. For an easier
understanding of the current transformer’s behavior, we
remove Lμ, because for high frequencies the current in L is
greater than that in Lμ. The simplified equivalent model is
shown in Fig.6 (b). The transfer function is
Io 1 （4）
=
I i s3C1 ( L1 + L'2 )C2' R ' + s2C1 ( L1 + L'2 ) + sR ' (C1 + C2' ) + 1
the high cutoff frequency is
1
fH = （5）
2π 3 C1C R' ( L1 + L'2 )
'
2
It could be seen that fH has nothing to do with the ratio n. To
improve the high frequency response, it is necessary to
decrease the product of C1C2' ( L1 + L'2 ) and so to minimize
the stray components’ value. Fig. 7 shows the bode plot of
R the current transformer.
1:n
Fig.7 High frequency response of current transformer
IV. EXPERIMENT RESULTS
Fig.8 shows the conducted EMI spectrum of the system
without any EMI filter. The conducted EMI spectrum
includes both of the common- and differential-mode EMI.
Although they should be separately considered, the
differential-mode EMI will not be discussed in this paper
with the assumption that some appropriate differential-mode
components are installed for each design stage. After
sufficient differential-mode filtering, the common-mode
Cm2 EMI plays as the bottleneck of the total conducted EMI.
L2 Io
R
C2
Fig.8 No EMI filter installed
Io
Fig.9 shows the conducted EMI spectrum when a
passive EMI filter is added into the system. As can be seen,
=
R' = R / n2 although the EMI spectrum of 400kHz to 2MHz is much
attenuated, the spectrum of 150kHz to 400KHz is still
greater than the standard. It is comparatively difficult for the
passive EMI filter to improve its performance during these
frequencies because the size and weight of the passive
components would increase to a great degree.
Fig.9 A passive EMI filter installed
311
 In Fig.10, both an AEF and a passive EMI filter is
added to the system. With the aid of the AEF, the EMI
spectrum of 150KHz to 700KHz is much attenuated so that
it is possible to meet the stand. Although the level of the
EMI spectrum id increased especially above 1MHz, the
entire level is placed under the given limit line.
Fig.10 One AEF with one passive EMI filter
V. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we have attempt to compare the
characteristics of active power filter and active EMI filter in
order to testify the feasibility of using active EMI filter into
the IPEMs. An active EMI filter with one stage passive
EMI filter is fabricated. Several conclusions are drawn as
follow:
(1) Although the active EMI filter is so much different
from the active power filter, the operational principle as well
as the circuit configuration is the same to each other.
Therefore the AEF could be utilized into the input filter
module of the IPEMs.
(2) The active EMI filter is smaller, less expensive,
easily to build, more flexible and practicable. Also it helps
to improve the performance of the passive EMI filter.
(3) Simulation analysis and experiment results showed
312
that, the developed active EMI filter gives satisfactory
performance in noise compensation characteristics.
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