EPIC

Energy Processing and Integrated Circuits

General description of the activity

The research group Energy Processing and Integrated Circuits (EPIC) belongs to the Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya, Dpt. of Electronic Engineering. For more than 20 years, the group has focused his efforts in the modeling, control, design and implementation of analog electronic circuits and switching power converters.  The research activities are supported by research projects funded by public research institutions and private companies at national and international levels. These activities are organized around the advising of doctorate students and the results are regularly published in scientific periodicals and conferences as well as in patent registrations. Teaching activities are mainly focused on energy processing disciplines at graduate, post-graduate and doctorate levels at the Telecommunications Engineering School of Barcelona (UPC). 

Specific areas of research energy field

The current research focuses on several fields requiring energy and power processing. On one hand part of the research is devoted to the analysis of the problems related with the new trends of distributed energy generation by means of renewable energy sources and their coupling to the mains.  The main problems addressed in this field are:

 

• The study of microgrids stability when both loads and renewable generation increase and how the control of the generators has to be designed.
• The energy sizing (including storage devices) and management of microgrids  for different energy-balance profiles and  scenarios (grid-connected, islanded…)

 

On the other hand the research focuses on the power processing required by the energy harvesting concept and its application to different autonomous systems such as sensors networks, as well as to the design of efficient RF switching amplifiers for next generation of mobile communication systems.