AbstractIn this paper, a novel soft‐switched interleaved boost converter composed of two‐cell boost conversion units and an auxiliary circuit is proposed and investigated. The proposed auxiliary circuit is implemented using only one auxiliary switch and a minimum number of passive components without an effective increase in the cost and the complexity of the converter. The main advantage of this auxiliary circuit is that it not only provides zero‐voltage‐transition (ZVT) for the main switches but also provides soft switching for the auxiliary switch and diodes. Though all semiconductor devices operate under soft switching, they do not have any additional voltage and current stresses. The proposed converter operates successfully in soft‐switching operation mode for a wide range of input voltage level and the load. In addition, it has advantages such as fewer structure complications, lower cost and ease of control. Since the two‐cell interleaved boost units are identical, operational analysis and design for the converter module become quite simple. In this study, the detailed steady‐state theoretical analysis of the proposed converter is presented, which is verified exactly by simulation and experiments carried out on a prototype of a 120 W and 50 kHz/cell interleaved boost converter. The practical results confirm the results obtained from theoretical analysis. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.