Duty Ratio Predictive Control Scheme for Digital Control of DC-DC Switching Converters

Abstract

The control loop time delay caused by sampling, the zero-order-holder effect and calculations is inevitable in the digital control of dc-dc switching converters. The time delay will limit the bandwidth of the control loop and therefore degrade the transient performance of digital systems. In this paper, the quantization time delay effects with different time delay values based on a generic second-order system are analyzed. The conclusion that the bandwidth of digital control is reduced by about 20% with a one cycle delay and by 50% with two cycles of delay in comparison with no time delay is obtained. To compensate the time delay and to increase the control loop bandwidth, a duty ratio predictive control scheme based on linear extrapolation is proposed. The compensation effect and a comparison of the load variation transient response characteristics with analogy control, conventional digital control and duty ratio predictive control with different time delay values are performed on a point-of-load Buck converter by simulations and experiments. It is shown that, using the proposed technique, the control loop bandwidth can be increased by 50% for a one cycle delay and 48.2% for two cycles of delay when compared to conventional digital control. Simulations and experimental results prove the validity of the conclusion of the quantization effects of the time delay and the proposed control scheme.