Nxp B.v.

Arvind Sherigar

Ashutosh Ravindra Joharapurkar

Shishir Goyal

Samiran Dam

Sounak Maji

A system for controlling an inductor current of a boost converter includes a start-up controller that is configured to generate a control signal that has a fixed on-time duration and a dynamic off-time duration that decreases with each cycle of the control signal, and a pulse width modulation (PWM) circuit that is configured to generate a PWM signal. During a start-up of the boost converter, the PWM signal transitions from a deactivated state to an activated state when the control signal is activated, and from an activated state to a deactivated state when the inductor current is equal to a reference current. The reference current corresponds to a peak value of the inductor current during the start-up. Thus, during the start-up, the duty cycle of the PWM signal increases with each cycle of the PWM signal. The PWM signal is provided to the boost converter for controlling the inductor current.

System for controlling inductor current of boost converter

An audio system has an amplifier having first and second power stages configurable to drive a speaker, each power stage having two transistors connected in series. Each of one or more analog-to-digital converters is connected to measure a corresponding voltage drop across a corresponding transistor. A processor is connected to characterize the operation of the audio system based on the measured voltage drops. The ADC(s) and the processor can be used during start-up and/or run-time operations of the audio system to determine or detect transistor ON resistance, system lag time, speaker current, open-load faults, shorted-load faults, and short-to-Vdd/Vss faults. To avoid errors, the processor determines or detects and avoids under-drive conditions, high-frequency conditions, ripple-current periods, and lag-time periods while characterizing the system operations.

Load diagnostics for audio amplifiers

A digitally-assisted voltage regulator includes a gate driver circuit and a compensation circuit. The voltage regulator digitizes the load profile, and uses the digital information to compensate for process and temperature variations. The voltage regulator outputs a regulated voltage signal and one or more control signals based on a supply voltage and a reference voltage. The gate driver circuit receives the regulated voltage signal and generates a gate driver signal. The compensation circuit receives the control signal and generates first and second compensation signals. The voltage regulator regulates a voltage level of the regulated voltage signal using the regulator compensation signal, and controls a ramp-rate of the gate driver signal using the second compensation signal.

Voltage regulator with performance compensation

A voltage regulator has a slow loop for providing a regulated DC current and a fast loop for providing a transient current. Feedback information is used to monitor the output voltage and control the current used to generate the output voltage. The voltage regulator does not need a capacitor to create transient current.

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Bengaluru, India

Arvind Sherigar