Abstract
High conversion ratio switching converters are used whenever there is a need to step-up dc source voltage level to a much higher output dc voltage level such as in photovoltaic systems, telecommunications and in some medical applications. A simple solution for achieving this high conversion ratio is by cascading different stages of dc-dc boost converters. The individual converters in such a cascaded system are usually designed separately applying classical design criteria. However these criteria may not be applicable for the complete cascaded system. This paper first presents a glimpse on the bifurcation behavior that a cascade connection of two boost converters can exhibit. It is shown that the desired periodic orbit can undergo period doubling leading to subharmonic oscillations and chaotic regimes. Then, in order to simplify the analysis the second stage is considered as constant current sink and design-oriented analysis is carried out to obtain stability boundaries in the parameter space by taking into account slope interactions between the state variables in the two-different stages.