Ivo Barbi
Biography
Ivo Barbi’s innovative concepts for soft-switching converter technologies have reduced the stresses encountered during operation of power equipment, providing smoother and more efficient results for applications including telecommunications, radar, and laser power-supplies. Compared to hard switching, where stress occurs because current and voltage may not be at zero, soft switching enables switching at zero voltage (ZVS) and zero current (ZCS). He helped develop a three-level ZVS-pulse-width-modulation dc-dc converter, which changed the field by bringing the advances of ZVS to converters that can handle higher voltage levels. He also proposed new topologies impacting telecom energy systems including a three-phase/level unidirectional PFC rectifier to feed the three-level ZVS-PWM dc-dc converter for compactness and a two-state switching cell for one of the most efficient telecom power supplies over the last 10 years.
An IEEE Life Fellow, Barbi is an Emeritus Professor with the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil.
