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Regan A. Zane

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Prof. Zane's research program is focused on a unique combination of power electronics, control systems, custom integrated circuits and embedded systems, and analog and digital circuit techniques. Research sponsors include industry members of the Colorado Power Electronics Center (CoPEC) and multiple government and private agencies, including DOE, DoEd, NSF, DARPA, NASA and the Coleman Institute. See the sections below for an overview of the core technical research and application areas and highlights from recent research projects. For additional information on the research program and areas, graduate students and publications, see the CoPEC home page.

Core Technical Areas

  • Modeling, analysis and design of high frequency switching power converters in power ranges from micro-watts to kilowatts, voltage levels from hundreds of millivolts to tens of kilo-volts
  • Converter and power system feedback and stability analysis and controller design
  • Custom analog and mixed signal integrated circuit design and application of digital control techniques to high frequency switching power converters

Primary Application Areas

  • Power management in energy efficient lighting systems: solid-state and electric discharge lamps
  • Low power energy harvesting for wireless devices in industrial, aerospace and medical applications
  • Online adaptive, tuning and system monitoring techniques applied to power converters and systems
  • Power management and electronics design solar renewable energy systems
  • High power density, high frequency, wide bandwidth point of load power converters

Energy efficient solid-state lighting solutions There are many exciting new developments in the solid-state LED lighting (SSL) area. Recent forecasts predict competitive penetration of SSL into commercial and residential markets for general lighting within the next five years, offering a high efficiency, environmentally friendly alternative to existing lighting solutions. We are researching new circuit architectures and drive techniques for large arrays of high brightness LED's with a focus on high efficiency, modularity and low cost component integration.

Energy efficient backlighting in LCD-TV DOE and Energy Star are taking note of large format TVs as they have begun to surpass energy usage of any other household appliance. The trend is towards large flat screen TVs, with LCD-TV providing high quality and potential for low cost and high efficiency. We have patent pending circuit architectures for high efficiency, low cost drive of backlights for LCD-TV, including parallel drive of cold-cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL's) and phase shifted drive of high brightness LED's with dynamic bus voltage scaling.

Low-power energy harvesting for wireless devices There is an exponentially growing demand for real-time information in all aspects of engineering systems, from intelligent building controls to health care systems, environmental control systems, structural integrity monitoring, and entertainment and marketing systems. The demand is fueling proliferation of wireless sensors and interactive devices that communicate via low power wireless networks. We are researching approaches for harvesting energy for maintenance free, wireless devices. Energy sources include RF, vibrational, solar, wind and biological.

Modular grid-interfaced PV systems New advances in photo-voltaic (PV) systems for improved efficiency and reduced cost and government incentives have significantly reduced the break even point in time on the investment. Thin film PV systems promise the benefits of low cost high volume manufacturing. One challenge for wide-spread residential use of PV systems is the complex arrangement of roofing sections in large residential homes. We are researching integration of power management circuitry with thin film PV cells to create modular roofing tiles with installation simplicity similar to existing roofing materials.

Intelligent monitoring and control of power conversion systems The goal here is to improve power quality and reliability by integrating intelligent controls into power converter modules to allow them to self adapt to the environment, including dynamic changes in the power bus at the input, the load characteristics or internal variations due to component temperature and aging. We are applying digital control techniques to perform online identification of the converter dynamics, auto-tuning of the feedback controller and self diagnostics that can report health and performance metrics to the power system in spacecraft, aircraft, naval ships or even computer workstations.

High efficiency electric discharge lamps High efficiency lighting systems are dominated by electric discharge type lamps, including high intensity discharge (HID) high and low pressure sodium and metal halide lamps and linear and compact fluorescent lamps (LFL and CFL). A number of challenges exist in driving these lamps with high efficiency and long life due to their highly nonlinear and dynamic behavior, requiring high voltage ignition pulses, lamp current regulation and multiple modes of operation and protection. We have performed extensive design oriented modeling and analysis of the resonant drive circuits and lamps and have ongoing research into high efficiency and performance ballasts.

© R. Zane