I am wondering if there are any similarites between DCAP and remote sensing in their funcionality or if they do totally different things.
thank you,
Rachel
These are completely different. DCAP is a control method while remote sensing is simply a way to regulate the output voltage more precisely by overcoming IR drops.
Did you have specific design requirements in mind?
Thank you for the reply Chris,
A customer is looking for a load step of 7.5A @ 20A/μS so correct me if I am wrong but the DCAP method helps to improve the load transient response? Are there any other chips that have fast load steps of that magnitude that don’t use any DCAP methods?
On the remote sensing side, can all DC/DC converters use remote sensing with some external circuitry i.e. op amp and resistors and caps, or would they have to have that functionality built into the chip?
DCAP uses adaptive on time to adjust the output duty cycle on a pulse by pulse basis without the delay of a cmpensated error amplifier. 7.5 A @ 20 A / usec is a rather extreme load step requirement. Even an adaptive on time controller may require a fair amount of output capacitance to cope with that load step.
Most dc/dc converters do not have differential inputs for teh error amplifier to accomodate +sense and -sense connections. You can certainly build that circuit externally and generate a single ended output to the VSENSE input of the converter.
John Tucker
Consumer DC/DC Applications