Low-cost acquisition method for on-line inductor characterization in switched power converters

This paper presents a low-cost method for online monitoring the inductor behavior in a switch-mode power converter. The method exploits the embedded electronics already available for the converter control, typically a microcontroller. By properly sampling the inductor voltage and current, the method allows estimating on-line the inductor's ripple and mean current, power-consumption and inductance, which is of great practical importance when ferrite-core inductors are employed in partial saturation. The method is validated on a boost converter.