Chaos detection in DC-DC converter using recurrence plots

Occurrence of nonlinear phenomena like bifurcations and chaos in Switched mode converters is due to the nonlinearity of switching operation. If reliable converters are to be designed, an appreciation that these possibilities exist is vital, together with knowledge of how to investigate them. By their very nature, linear methods give little insight into nonlinear phenomena and are of limited value in predicting and analyzing them. Also they require long and noise free data which is not normally the case with the data available. In this paper, to overcome these difficulties, the recently developed pattern recognition method of nonlinear dynamics for time series analysis called Recurrence plot analysis method has been proposed for robust analysis of data obtained from nonlinear switching buck converter. An experimental prototype of buck converter was built and the recurrence analysis was carried out. In so doing, recurrence plot is observed to be an useful tool for providing a complete image of dynamic course at a glance without the reference of model equations and physical variables.