New Industry Products

APC Debuts Step-Up DC/DC Converter Range

June 23, 2003 by Jeff Shepard

Advanced Power Conversion plc (APC, Farnborough, England) announced a range of cost-effective, flexible and scalable converters that power new 48V devices from 24V legacy power systems. The new converters are suitable for implementing the new 2.5G and 3G wireless services.

The first is the APC-F501, a compact, low-profile, 500W, full-brick, dc/dc converter measuring 116.8mm x 61.0mm x 12.7mm that efficiently (typically >90%) converts a lower dc voltage to a higher dc voltage. The versatility of the patented Interleaved Full-Bridge Boost Buck (IFB3) topology permits nominal input voltages of 24Vdc or 28Vdc to be boosted up to a regulated 28Vdc or 48Vdc.

The second product is reached by combining the standard APC-F501 with a heatsink and filtering onto a single board, providing a straightforward, scalable and cost-effective solution to increased power requirements, and the versatility needed for N+1 redundancy. The third device, the APC2000, supplies up to 2,000W of 48Vdc output from a 24Vdc input from each 2U x 3U unit.

The efficiency of the four APC500 dc/dc converters in each APC2000 provides power density and easier thermal management than conventional converters. A 3U high, 19in, rack-mount chassis can house up to four of the hot-swappable converters to supply 8kW of total power, or 6kW of N+1 redundant power. Where space is at a premium, the APC2000 can also be mounted horizontally in a 2U, 19in rack supplying 6,000W of total dc power.