The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jan. 19, 1999
Filed:
Nov. 13, 1997
Craig H Becker-Irvin, Redondo Beach, CA (US);
Kin E Shum, Los Angeles, CA (US);
Hughes Electronics Corporation, El Segundo, CA (US);
Abstract
A single-fault tolerant DC-to-DC converter having an output voltage clamp is capable of sourcing current to and sinking current from a load while maintaining a well regulated secondary bus voltage V.sub.bus. The clamp is disabled when the DC-to-DC converter is sourcing current so that all of the current is delivered to the load and is enabled when V.sub.bus exceeds a clamp set point voltage V.sub.clamp to sink the excess current and clamp V.sub.bus at V.sub.clamp. To provide single fault tolerance, the clamp includes a fault detection clamp element that is controlled by the DC-to-DC converter so that they operate mutually exclusively and a regulator clamp element whose resistance is set in a negative feedback control loop so that, when the fault protection clamp element is activated, both clamp elements sink the excess current and control the secondary bus voltage.