Prof. Fang Luo Wins The 2023 Motohisa Kanda Award

Prof. Fang Luo

Fang Luo, Empire Innovation Associate Professor and Director of the Spellman High Voltage Power Electronics Laboratory at Stony Brook University, received the 2023 Motohisa Kanda Award. This award, established in 2015, honors the most cited paper in the IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) over the past five years.

The award-winning paper, “A Survey of Active EMI Filters for Conducted EMI Noise Reduction in Power Electronic Converters”, was co-authored by Luo and Balaji Narayanasamy. Since its publication in 2019, it has garnered the most citations (74) among papers published in the last five years (2019-2023).

The paper presents a comprehensive survey of different Active EMI Filters (AEFs) and their implementations for different power converters. It discusses the challenges faced by power converter designers due to the bulky nature of passive EMI filters, which can occupy up to 30% of the system volume. The paper explores various techniques to reduce the noise source and thereby minimize the passive filter volume. It also delves into the promise of AEFs in reducing the passive component volume in power converters, with volume reductions higher than 50% reported in the past three decades.

The paper concludes by summarizing the numerous AEF implementations for conducted EMI mitigation in power electronic converters. It emphasizes the importance of careful selection of the appropriate AEF based on the type of converter and the type of noise to maximize attenuation and possible volume reduction. The paper also highlights the challenges in achieving high attenuation at lower frequencies using AEFs and discusses various implementations that have achieved significant attenuation.

However, the paper notes that the majority of these implementations use additional high-voltage passive elements for compensation to ensure stability or rely on inductors either in the form of CTs for noise-sensing or voltage transformers for noise-cancellation. It calls for novel methods that could further enhance the performance of the filter without the need for additional high-voltage capacitors for stability improvements or injection transformers on power lines. The paper also points out the need for more research on the auxiliary power supply, power loss, and protection for the AEF to enable widespread adoption.

Read “A Survey of Active EMI Filters for Conducted EMI Noise Reduction in Power Electronic Converters”