Texas Instruments Corporation

National Semiconductor Corporation

Jeff Lee Nilles

Sombuddha Chakraborty

Yogesh Kumar Ramadass

Farzad Sahandiesfanjani

Chunping Song

Barry James Culpepper

Faruk J Nome

Mervin John

Darryl Byron Phillips

Noman A Paya

In described examples, a system regulates provision of DC-DC electrical power. The system includes a DC-DC converter, an input voltage node to receive an input voltage, a current source, a voltage source node, and a ground switch. The DC-DC converter includes a flying capacitor and multiple converter switches. The current source is coupled between the input voltage node and a top plate of the flying capacitor, to provide current to the top plate when the current source is activated by an activation voltage. The voltage source node is coupled to the input voltage node and to the current source, to provide the activation voltage to the current source, such that the activation voltage is not higher than a selected voltage between: a breakdown voltage of the converter switches; and a maximum value of the input voltage minus the breakdown voltage. The ground switch is coupled between a bottom plate of the flying capacitor and a ground.

Multilevel converter using node voltage track and control

Circuits and methods for controlling a transistor that has first, second and third terminals, wherein a voltage level at said first terminal controls in part a current flow from said second terminal to said third terminal. A controller receives an voltage existing across the second and third terminals of the transistor, generates an isolated voltage and uses that voltage to power components of the controller. The controller provides a voltage to the first terminal of the transistor, whereby the controller regulates the voltage across the second and third terminals of the transistor by regulating the voltage provided to the first terminal.

Millivolt power harvesting FET controller

In described examples, a DC-DC converter provides electrical power. The converter includes an inductor and a flying capacitor. In response to an input voltage transitioning from below a normal operation threshold to above the threshold, a first transition phase and a second transition phase are repeatedly performed. The first transition phase comprises coupling an input terminal of the inductor to a ground, and the second transition phase comprises delivering power through the inductor by discharging the flying capacitor through the inductor. After the input voltage is above the normal operation threshold, and a voltage across the flying capacitor has reached a target voltage proportional to the input voltage, a charging phase, a freewheeling phase and a discharging phase are repeatedly performed. The charging phase comprises charging the flying capacitor by coupling the flying capacitor to the input voltage, and delivering current from the input voltage through the inductor. The freewheeling phase comprises coupling the input terminal to the ground. The discharging phase comprises coupling the capacitor to the input terminal to deliver current from the flying capacitor and discharge the flying capacitor through the inductor.

Voltage control of flying capacitor in adaptive multilevel converters

An error amplifier for closed loop operation is provided. The error amplifier has a track input and a feedback input. During soft-start, a voltage offset is added to the error amplifier input. In one embodiment, the voltage offset is gradually removed during the soft-start.

Glitch-free start-up with a tracking pin

A hysteretic regulator is provided. The hysteretic regulator includes a delay compensation circuit that adds a delay to the output of the hysteretic comparator. The delay is dependent on the input voltage. For low duty cycles, the slope of the inductor current is much greater for the rising edge than it is for the falling edge. The delay compensation circuit adds sufficient delay to the falling edge so that the undershoot cancels the overshoot.

Apparatus and method for switching regulator with compensation delay for output voltage error correction

A DC-to-DC converter having multiple power channels and a switching controller which generates a pulse-width modulated control signal for each power channel, and a switching controller for use in (and a method for generating power switch control signals for) such a converter. The control signals are generated in response to trigger signal trains generated by trigger channels. The trigger channels rotate relative to the power channels so that the control signals are generated in response to a sequence of trigger channel states. In some embodiments, the controller has one control signal channel and one trigger channel for each power channel. In other embodiments, there are N power channels, N control signal channels, and M reset channels (each for generating a trigger signal train), where M is an integer greater than N. The extra channel or channels is used for preventing rotation errors which would otherwise delay opening of the closed power switches. Preferably, the sequence of trigger channel states is a periodic sequence in which each trigger channel is provided sequentially to a repeating sequence of the control signal channels, but it is alternatively a non-periodic sequence in which each trigger channel is provided equally on a time-averaged basis to each control signal channel. In some embodiments, each time interval between rotations is sufficiently long to avoid significant problems due to rotation errors which can result from rotation of trigger channels during a power switch cycle). In some embodiments, the controller includes logic circuitry for preventing operation at 100% duty cycle which would otherwise cause energy transfer problems in some applications, such as boost, inverting and transformer coupled circuits.

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Los Altos, CA, United States of America

Jeff Lee Nilles