Design and control of high voltage gain DC-DC converter for CubeSat propulsion

This paper introduces a high voltage gain DC-DC converter feeding Electrospray thrusters for CubeSats with variable output voltage according to the size of maneuvers to be performed. The proposed converter presents improvements compared to previous publications, related to voltage gain, reliability, size and simplicity of configuration. This topology consists of two stages: classical Boost in cascade with high-frequency transformer and two voltage multipliers (positive and negative). The operating principle and the design of this topology are described in detail. In order to produce two regulated voltages ranging from -3500 to - 1500 V and from 1500 to 3500 V, the PI controller is suggested as a solution for control loop based on a constructed model of the proposed converter using the averaged space state. For validation, the simulations of the proposed DC-DC converter by Simulink MATLAB and the breadboard tests are performed.