A novel behavioral method of SPICE macromodeling of magnetic components including the temperature and frequency dependencies

Abstract

This paper presents a new method of SPICE macromodeling of magnetic components, that considers both the magnetic saturation and hysteresis processes, as well as the self-heating electrothermal effects. It uses the analog behavioral modeling facilities of modern SPICE-like simulators, that enable the description of a large number of nonlinear algebraic and differential equations by means of nonlinear controlled voltage and current sources. Thus, the electromagnetic and electrothermal laws are described with "in-line equation" controlled sources, that form an electrical equivalent circuit of the global magnetic-electrical-thermal behavior of the magnetic component. The B-H loop is piecewise-linear approximated and therefore any kind of magnetic material can be modeled. The temperature and frequency dependencies of the B-H loop are directly introduced in the macromodel with "look-up table" controlled sources. The resulting model is portable in all the modern SPICE simulators that support the ABM facilities, and it assures a higher accuracy and a better computational efficiency, with no convergence problems. The proposed behavioral macromodel was tested for several commercial magnetic cores, showing a good agreement with data sheets characteristics.