Over the last forty years, advancements in semiconductor technology have led to their use in a variety of applications including motor drives, dc to dc converters, and uninterruptible power supplies. Considering their widespread use, the power loss modeling of power semiconductor switches and diodes is of great interest. Herein, a method to represent switching losses in a context of a system level time-domain simulation is proposed. This method set forth is a behavioral model that includes switching losses without attempting to represent the details of the switching event. Unlike physics-based models, this model accounts for switching losses without introducing fast dynamics into the simulation and can therefore take large time steps. Hence, the computational efficiency of conventional time-domain simulations for component/system studies is retained. In addition, a method for characterizing device losses as a function of temperature is developed. A new apparatus and procedure is set forth which will enable measurements to be taken rapidly, which, in turn, leads to superior device characterization.
