A 0.04 mm (2) Buck-Boost DC-DC Converter for Biomedical Implants Using Adaptive Gain and Discrete Frequency Scaling Control.

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a reconfigurable buck-boost switched-capacitor DC-DC converter suitable for use in a wide range of biomedical implants. The proposed converter has an extremely small footprint and uses a novel control method that allows coarse and fine control of the output voltage. The converter uses adaptive gain control, discrete frequency scaling and pulse-skipping schemes to regulate the power delivered to a range of output voltages and loads. Adaptive gain control is used to implement variable switching gain ratios from a reconfigurable power stage and thereby make coarse steps in output voltage. A discrete frequency scaling controller makes discrete changes in switching frequency to vary the power delivered to the load and perform fine tuning when the output voltage is within 10% of the target output voltage. The control architecture is predominately digital and it has been implemented as part of a fully-integrated switched-capacitor converter design using a standard bulk CMOS 0.18 μm process. Measured results show that the converter has an output voltage range of 1.0 to 2.2 V, can deliver up to 7.5 mW of load power and efficiency up to 75% using an active area of only 0.04 mm (2), which is significantly smaller than that of other designs. This low-area, low-complexity reconfigurable power converter can support low-power circuits in biomedical implant applications.