Special Issue on Power Electronics Systems for Aerospace Applications

Aerospace applications have been a major driver for the development of power electronics. The demand of light and efficient power supplies, common both for space and aeronautic applications, spearheaded the research and development efforts around switching mode power systems. Major seminal works in the field, such as those pioneered by Prof. R. D. Middlebrook, were developed under funding from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Another example is that average current mode control or transconductance control was developed in the European Space Agency (ESA) laboratories while at the same time peak current mode control was invented in U.S. institutions.