Level DC-DC Converter Research Articles

A 20 MHz On-Chip All-NMOS 3-Level DC–DC Converter With Interception Coupling Dead-Time Control and 3-Switch Bootstrap Gate Driver

In mobile applications, power density highly affects mobility, cost, form factor, and battery time. To improve power density, high switching frequency operation is highly desirable for a power converter. However, with high switching frequency, switching power loss increases significantly, compromising efficiency and battery time. This article presents an on-chip 3-level DC-DC converter, using all NMOS devices as power switches, which reduces switching power loss and silicon cost. To facilitate the all-NMOS power stage operation and enhance the robustness to input supply variation, a 3-switch boost-strap gate driver is designed. Meanwhile, an interception coupling dead-time (ICDT) control is introduced to minimize dead-time related power loss. An integrated circuit prototype was fabricated using a 0.35 μm CMOS process. Robustly working with a variable input voltage from 3 to 6 V, it regulates a programmable power output from 0.4 to 1.6 V, with a maximum power efficiency of 85.5% over a full power range of 800 mW and a maximum power density of 1.07 W/mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> . Thanks to the ICDT control, it achieves a 0.5 ns dead-time over a full-load range of 500 mA.

Comparison of Filter with Fuzzy Controlled Three Level DC-DC Converter Fed Drive

A simple Fuzzy logic controller (FLC) applied to buck converter is presented in this paper. This approach uses FLC which performs better when compared with the conventional PI controllers. In proposed buck converters, high voltage dc supply is switched at very high frequency and inductively transferred to dc load via a high frequency transformer and rectifier. In this converter four power switches are connected in series to primary of high frequency transformer for large load currents. To achieve large step-down voltage ratios the power switches are turned ON and OFF alternatively with a time gap. The voltage step-down ratios, Total Harmonic Distortion and angular velocity of drive are the parameters to be analyzed. The comparison with the original FLC and comparison of three level DC-DC converter with capacitor and pi filter is carried out by MATLAB-Simulink simulation and Model is designed to verify the proposed method performance.

A Fully-Integrated 3-Level DC-DC Converter for Nanosecond-Scale DVFS

On-chip DC-DC converters have the potential to offer fine-grain power management in modern chip-multiprocessors. This paper presents a fully integrated 3-level DC-DC converter, a hybrid of buck and switched-capacitor converters, implemented in 130 nm CMOS technology. The 3-level converter enables smaller inductors (1 nH) than a buck, while generating a wide range of output voltages compared to a 1/2 mode switched-capacitor converter. The test-chip prototype delivers up to 0.85 A load current while generating output voltages from 0.4 to 1.4 V from a 2.4 V input supply. It achieves 77% peak efficiency at power density of 0.1 W/mm2 and 63% efficiency at maximum power density of 0.3 W/mm2. The converter scales output voltage from 0.4 V to 1.4 V (or vice-versa) within 20 ns at a constant 450 mA load current. A shunt regulator reduces peak-to-peak voltage noise from 0.27 V to 0.19 V under pseudo-randomly fluctuating load currents. Using simulations across a wide range of design parameters, the paper compares conversion efficiencies of the 3-level, buck and switched-capacitor converters.

Amplitude Modulated Inverter with 3-level DC-DC Converter System for Utility Interactive Photovoltaic Power System

This paper proposes an amplitude-modulated inverter with a 3-level DC-DC converter system for utility interactive photovoltaic power system. This system is composed of the DC-DC converter, which generates a fully rectified sinusoidal waveform, and the inverter, which is synchronized with utility system. From the experimental results, we concluded that the proposed system has high efficiency and sinusoidal current with unity power factor in the utility system, and it is useful for utility interactive photovoltaic power system.