Texas Instruments Corporation

International Rectifier Corporation

Reed Semiconductor Corp.

Wenkai Wu

George J Schuellein

Weidong Zhu

Kuang-Yao Cheng

Preetam Tadeparthy

Hal Chen

Xuening Li

Dattatreya Baragur Suryanarayana

Naga Venkata Prasadu Mangina

Nancy Zhang

Ken Boyden

Rami Hamze

Preetam Charan Anand Tadeparthy

Mayank Jain

Wei Dong

Yipeng Su

Mark Crowther

Jialun Du

Matthew John Ascher Schurmann

Shishuo Zhao

Nai-chi Lee

Xiao Xu

Shuhua Zhang

Qian Chen

Cheng-Wei Chen

An apparatus includes a plurality of switches connected in parallel between an input terminal and an output terminal of a power bus, a plurality of current sensing circuits coupled to the plurality of switches, wherein each current sensing circuit is coupled to a corresponding switch, and a plurality of current sharing circuits configured to receive current sensing signals from the plurality of current sensing circuits and generate a plurality of gate drive signals to control the plurality of switches so as to achieve a predetermined current distribution among the plurality of switches.

Current sharing apparatus and control method

A buck converter with an asymmetric threshold voltage of its gate drive circuit design for improving power efficiency while keeping the gate drive design simple.

Buck converter system with an asymmetric threshold voltage gate drive circuit design

A multiphase buck converter that includes smart two-phase power stages for reducing switching losses. Each of the smart power stages includes a first high side switch, a second high side switch, a first low side switch, a second low side switch, a switching capacitor, a first inductor, and a second inductor. The exemplary multiphase buck converter includes two such smart power stages and a multiphase controller for generating PWM signals for driving the two smart power stages synchronously.

Two-phase smart power stage (SPS) for multiphase buck converters

A circuit for a multi-phase power regulator including a power stage with a first phase and a second phase, the circuit including phase management circuitry coupled to the first phase and the second phase to control the first phase and the second phase, a first comparator coupled to an output of the multi-phase power regulator to compare a value of the output of the multi-phase power regulator to a first threshold value to produce a first comparison result, and phase shedding circuitry coupled to the first comparator and the phase management circuitry to control the phase management circuitry to activate or deactivate the second phase based at least partially on the first comparison result.

Multi-phase power regulator

A voltage regulator system includes a switch system including a power switch to conduct an output current through an inductor based on an input voltage and a switching signal to generate an output voltage at a load. A feedback system generates a PWM signal based on the output voltage and based on a variable reference voltage. A gate driver system generates the switching signal based on the PWM signal. The gate driver system controls the switch system to increase the output voltage at output voltage slopes in each of startup stages during startup of the voltage regulator system. A sampling system samples the output current and the output voltage during the startup of the voltage regulator system to measure each slope of the output voltage slopes at each of the respective startup stages during the startup of the voltage regulator system.

Multi-slope startup voltage regulator system

A circuit includes a phase control logic, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and digital logic. The phase control logic is configured to couple to a plurality of power phases of a multi-phase power supply. The digital logic is configured to couple to the phase control logic and the ADC, to receive an instruction to operate in a self-calibration mode of operation, receive a first message including a value associated with a calibrated load configured to couple to the plurality of power phases, perform a self-calibration sub-routine for each power phase of the plurality of power phases based at least partially on the received instruction, the received first message, and a signal received from the ADC, and receive a second message instructing the digital logic to store a result of the self-calibration in a memory of the circuit.

Power supply telemetry self-calibration

An apparatus includes first and second power converter stages, each stage having a primary side and a secondary side. The primary side of the first stage includes a switch Tcoupled to a voltage source and a switch Tcoupled to the switch T. The primary side of the second stage includes a switch Tcoupled to the switch Tand a switch Tcoupled to the switch Tand to the voltage source. The apparatus includes a control circuit to control an on/off time of the switches. The control circuit includes four gate driver controllers to control the on/off time of the switches and a current sharing control section to increase or decrease the on time of a switch based on a comparison of a current through one of multiple output inductors to an average current through the multiple output inductors.

Serial input power converter

A multiphase DC-DC converter includes a first phase circuit including a higher inductance inductor and a second phase circuit including a lower inductance inductor. An output of the inductors are tied together providing a Vout. A phase manager and current sharing (PMCS) block receives a feedback signal from a feedback network coupled between Vout and the PMCS block that receives current feedback from phase circuits. The PMCS block generates driver control signals at a first time when a load is requesting a lower load current for controlling the phase circuits to operate with a first current sharing ratio to provide the lower load current, and at a second time when the load is requesting a higher load current controls the phase circuits to operate at a second current sharing ratio that is different from the first current sharing ratio having a higher average second phase circuit current.

Multiphase DC-DC converter with configurable current sharing and phase management

One embodiment includes a power regulator system. The system includes a switch control stage configured to generate at least one activation signal based on a pulse-width modulation (PWM) signal and to control a respective at least one switch to generate an output voltage. The system also includes a feedback stage configured to generate the PWM signal based on a ramp signal and a feedback voltage that is based on the output voltage. The system further includes a ramp generator stage configured to adaptively generate the ramp signal based on the output voltage and based on the at least one activation signal.

Power regulator system with adaptive ramp signal generator

Systems and devices for smooth light load operation in a DC/DC converter are presented. The disclosed systems and methods enable smooth discontinuous conduction mode (DCM)/continuous conduction mode (CCM) transition. The disclosed systems and methods of smooth light load operation in a DC/DC converter may also avoid the generation of sub-harmonics during light load operation. In an example embodiment, a rising ramp is used to control the ON time of the converter oscillator, while a falling ramp controls the OFF time. During DCM operation, the minimum value of the falling ramp is clamped. The clamping of the falling ramp ensures a substantially similar level of the error amplifier output in both CCM and DCM and avoids disturbances caused by a difference in the error amplifier outputs between the modes.

Systems and methods of smooth light load operation in a DC/DC converter

One embodiment of the invention includes regulation voltage system for a power supply system. The system includes a current sense system configured to generate a sense signal that represents an output current of the power supply system that is supplied to a load. The system also includes a positive voltage droop controller configured to provide a regulation voltage to the power supply system, the positive voltage droop controller setting the regulation voltage to one of a predetermined fixed reference voltage or a variable reference voltage based on the sense signal. The variable reference voltage can be less than the predetermined fixed reference voltage.

System and method for reducing output voltage of a power regulator under light load

Systems and devices for ripple reduction in a DC/DC converter are presented. The disclosed systems and methods enable ripple reduction in discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) operation. In DCM, the inductor current peak to peak ripple may be reduced based on the load current. To achieve the reduction of the inductor peak to peak current ripple, a digital counter is used to count the time between consecutive PWM pulses. The digital output of the counter is used to control the pulse width modulation. As the digital output of the counter increases, the PWM on-time decreases. Since the PWM pulse is demanded by the load in DCM mode, the peak to peak inductor ripple is modulated by the counter, or, in turn, modulated by the load current.

Systems and methods of ripple reduction in a DC/DC converter

A ripple regulator for providing a pulse width modulation (PWM) signal for regulating an output voltage of a power converter switching stage. The regulator including a ripple circuit for providing a ripple voltage; a comparison circuit for comparing the ripple voltage to an output of an error amplifier; and a PWM circuit producing the PWM signal and receiving an output of the comparison circuit and a clock signal input, the clock signal input determining a first edge of the PWM signal and the output of said comparison circuit determining a second edge of the PWM signal.

Fixed frequency ripple regulator

A control circuit for a multi-phase converter including an analog front-end circuit for receiving and processing an output voltage and current of the converter circuits and an average output current; a digital circuit for producing an output voltage reference for setting a desired output voltage of the converter; and an error circuit for comparing the output voltage reference and a parameter related to said output voltage and current for generating control signals for controlling the converter circuits, said error circuit including an Analog to Digital Converter circuit, further comprising a digital PWM generation circuit controlled by said Analog to Digital converter circuit for generating digital control signals for controlling the converter circuits.

Growing community of inventors

East Greenwich, RI, United States of America

Wenkai Wu