Prepared by Dr. Aaron Scher
[email protected]
Oregon Institute of Technology
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Below is an annotated schematic of the diode simple rectifier with shunt inductor (series diode configuration).
Below is a mathematical derivation to find the power conversion efficiency of the diode rectifier circuit. Note that I am assuming an ideal diode with zero threshold voltage.
In the above equations, we have determined that we can achieve 100% power efficiency if the load resistance is twice the generator resistance (i.e. RL = Rg).
Below is an LTspice schematic used to verify our results. Here we have Rg = 50 Ohms and RL = 100 Ohms. With this ratio, we predict an efficiency of η =100%. In the schematic below, our voltage source amplitude is 1 V. This corresponds to an available power of: Pav = 1^2/50/8 = 0.0025 W = 2.5 mW. The plots show that the output DC (average) power across the load is about VDC = 490 mV. This corresponds to an average power dissipated across the load PL = .490^2/50 = 0.0024 W. Hence, the efficiency as determined using LTspice is PL/Pav = 0.0024/0.0025 = .96 = 96%, which agrees quite well with the theoretically predicted result of 100%.
