Tyco Electronics Power Systems, Inc.

Lineage Power Corporation

Lam D Vu

Minghua Fu

Zhizheng Liu

Ron Ye

The present invention provides a soft-transition controller for use with a synchronous converter having primary and secondary rectifiers. In one embodiment, the soft-transition controller includes a primary driver configured to provide a primary drive signal to the primary rectifier operating in a synchronous mode, while the secondary rectifier is operating in a diode mode, to provide an output voltage of the synchronous rectifier. Additionally, the soft-transition controller also includes a complementary driver coupled to the primary driver and configured to provide a soft-transition drive signal during a transition period, which transfers the secondary rectifier from the diode mode to a synchronous mode while maintaining the output voltage within a predetermined voltage range.

Soft-transition controller of a synchronous converter

A system for, and method of, increasing effective pulse-width modulated (PWM) drive signal resolution and a power converter incorporating the system or the method. In one embodiment, the system includes: (1) a duty cycle calculator configured to calculate a theoretical duty cycle for a PWM drive signal to be provided to an associated power converter based on at least one operating condition thereof, the theoretical duty cycle not a member of a pre-established set of allowable duty cycles and (2) a duty cycle approximator coupled to the duty cycle calculator and configured to generate a sequence of members of the set of allowable duty cycles, wherein the sequence at least approximately averages to the theoretical duty cycle.

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Plano, TX, United States of America

Lam D Vu