Our Power Electronics engineers have experience on a diverse array of power control and conversion products with inventive methods of cost optimization and accelerated time-to-market. Our experience in power management and conversion products allows our clients to deliver cost-optimized, leading-edge products swiftly to market. We have strong expertise in the power electronic systems design and optimization and a large resource pool of hardware experts capable of architecting complex designs in power electronics to provide you the best possible solution.

Some of our Power Electronics Design Engineering Capabilities are:

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• Power Supply and Conversion

• String and Micro-Inverters

• Control Algorithms for AC/DC Drives

• DC Optimizers

• Battery Management Systems, including Grid-Tied, Off-Grid, Backup Battery Management, Off-Grid & Distributed Storage, Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

• Motors & Electric Drives

• Energy Metering and Metrology

• Analog and Power Circuits

• Digital Control and Power Conversion, Software or FPGA Firmware for Digital Control

• Sensor Interfaces and Process Controls

• Ruggedized Indoor and Outdoor Enclosures

• Renewable Energy Systems such as Wind, Solar and Fuel Cell

• Ship Systems

• Structural, Thermal, EMC Design, Designing Thermal Management and EMI/EMC Compliance as per IEC, MIL, and SAE Standards.

• Safety with Electrical Clearances and Plastic Material Flame Ratings. Insulation Issues for High Voltage Power Electronics

• Firmware and Control Software

 

POWER ELECTRONICS COMMUNICATION LINKS

We have experience in rugged communications links specifically for power electronics. Power converter environments have significant levels of electrical and magnetic noise so communications links in and around them must be robust and reliable. Communications can frequently drop out or errors increase when the converter switching is running. Sometimes the power converter operations meet EMC but the internal communications link has errors.  Very often the converter noise is increasing the bit error rate of the communication links. For power converter communication links the information needs to arrive accurately and at a certain time. Communications links are at the heart of modern digitally controlled power converters. Often the communications is what makes the converter work.  The internet of things is a wave that will roll over everything. If the safety critical communications link is unreliable, the product will potentially not be safe. Communication link failure in the field can be devastating. High noise immunity digital signals with large signal integrity and high noise margins can be used and they ensure the signal layer is robust.  Differential signalling, matched impedances and good signal encoding can all be deployed. Robust clock recovery and phase lock loops ensure timing recovery and synchronisation of time signals with controlled jitter.  Technologies such as LVDS provide high data speeds and good data integrity.  Multidrop differential signal systems can be used as back planes if required.  The Ethernet is useful as a physical layer.  CANBus and Modbus  with Ethernet versions are also alternatives. Transmission control and error correction are handled with the link end state machines implemented on FPGAs.  These ensure the links can operate safely with high fidelity.  For lower speed links, state machines can be implemented in software on DSP or microprocessors. In high and medium voltage power electronics, the EM noise can be significant.  In high frequency switching power supplies the EM noise can also be very large.  A single bit error might cause the destruction of the power converter or delay for the customer data update. Therefore reliability is essential.  These high noise medium voltage systems also have the problem where in a fault the ground potential can rise leading to large currents flowing in the wires.  This can be prevented using isolated links. AC power converters are connected to the AC network which is great as a communications link.  Using its own line connection. the power converters can communicate with each other through the AC network. Ripple control, power line communication (PLC) and ethernet over the in home wiring system are all alternates for inexpensive networking. Plastic Fibre Optics can also be used in Power Electronics. Plastic fiber optics is fast enough, cheap and works with a distance limit of about 50 meters.  These characteristics are just right for a power converter. Glass fiber optic links are AC coupled to go fast.  This means that fast glass fibre systems cannot be used to do on/off gate drive signalling, whereas plastic fiber links can. Considering cost of the connectors and cable, plastic fiber optic links are very competitive with wire connections in terms of cost for the same data rate.  The advantage of the fiber is the electrical or galvanic isolation.  Clearance and creepage spacings of meters are possible, and common mode interference is completely avoided. Communication links over PCBs run between ICs. Deploying differential tracking and good coding techniques allows excellent noise rejection, EMC compatibility and high data rates.

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PCB & PCBA DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

A printed circuit board, or briefly denoted as PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, tracks, or traces, etched commonly from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. A PCB populated with electronic components is a printed circuit assembly (PCA), also known as a printed circuit board assembly (PCBA). The term PCB is often used informally for both bare and assembled boards. PCBs are sometimes single sided (meaning they have one conductive layer), sometimes double sided (meaning they have two conductive layers) and sometimes they come as multi-layer structures (with outer and inner layers of conductive paths). To be more explicit, in these multi-layer printed circuit boards, multiple layers of material are laminated together. PCBs are inexpensive, and can be highly reliable. They require much more layout effort and higher initial cost than either wire-wrapped or point-to-point constructed circuits, but are much cheaper and faster for high-volume production. Much of the electronics industry's PCB design, assembly, and quality control needs are set by standards that are published by the IPC organization.

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We have engineers specialized in PCB & PCBA design & development and testing. If you have a project you would like us to evaluate, contact us. We will take into consideration available space in your electronic system and use the most suitable EDA (Electronic Design Automation) tools available to create the schematic capture. Our experienced designers will place the components and heat sinks in the most suitable locations on your PCB. We can either create board from schematic and then create the GERBER FILES for you or we can use your Gerber files to manufacture the PCB boards and verify their operation. We are flexible, so depending on what you have available and what you need done by us, we will do it accordingly. As some manufacturers require it, we create the Excellon file format too for specifying drill holes. Some of the EDA tools we use are:

• EAGLE PCB design software

• KiCad

• Protel

 

AGS-Engineering has the tools and knowledge to design your PCB no matter how large or small.

We use the industry’s top tier design tools and are driven to be the best.

• HDI Designs with micro vias and advanced materials - Via-in-Pad, laser micro vias.

• High speed, multi layer digital PCB designs - Bus routing, differential pairs, matched lengths.

• PCB Designs for space, military, medical and commercial applications

• Extensive RF and analog design experience (printed antennas, guard rings , RF shields...)

• Signal integrity issues to meet your digital design needs (tuned traces, diff pairs...)

• PCB Layer management for signal integrity and impedance control

• DDR2, DDR3, DDR4, SAS and differential pair routing expertise

• High density SMT designs (BGA, uBGA, PCI, PCIE, CPCI...)

• Flex PCB designs of all types

• Low level analog PCB designs for metering

• Ultra low EMI designs for MRI applications

• Complete assembly drawings

• In-Circuit Test data generation (ICT)

• Drill, panel and cutout drawings designed

• Professional fabrication documents created

• Autorouting for dense PCB designs

 

Other examples of PCB & PCA related services we offer are

• ODB++ Valor review for a complete DFT / DFT design verification.

• Full DFM review for manufacturing

• Full DFT review for testing

• Part database management

• Component replacement and substitution

• Signal integrity analysis

 

If you are not yet at the PCB & PCBA design phase, but need the schematics of the electronic circuits, we are here to help you. See our other menus such as analog and digital design to learn more about what we can do for you. So, if you need the schematics first, we can prepare them and then transfer your schematic diagram into a drawing of your printed circuit board and subsequently create the Gerber files.

 

AGS-Engineering’s worldwide design and channel partner network provides a channel between our authorized design partners and our customers in need of technical expertise and cost-effective solutions in a timely manner. Click the following link to download our DESIGN PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM brochure. 

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If you would like to explore our manufacturing capabilities along with our engineering capabilities, we recommend you to visit our custom manufacturing site http://www.agstech.net where you will also find details of our PCB & PCBA prototyping and manufacturing capabilities.