For low-power isolated designs that require an extended product life cycle, such as gate-driver bias for automotive traction inverters, or 4- to 20-mA loop sensors in field transmitters for factory automation applications, many designers choose to leverage the reliability and simplicity of a primary-side regulated (PSR) multioutput flyback converter. Two key attributes of…
Anyone designing electronic products is forced to make a trade-off between adding modern features and trying to fit everything into the available space. As electronic designs advance, every iteration of new technology demands more creativity. Adding new, complex features while increasing power density and decreasing the size of the power supply becomes a key priority. While this problem spans almost every application…
The current flowing to or from a battery pack is measured and used for several different purposes. For example, if a removable battery pack from a power tool has an accidental short, huge currents may flow and lead to an unsafe situation. Large currents may similarly flow if an appliance with an embedded battery (such as a vacuum cleaner) malfunctions internally, possibly…
Typically, scalable characteristics are something that Spider-Man looks for in a building. And although power-supply design may not seem like your typical superhero activity, the scalability of your design is often just as important as meeting the requirements of the application you’re designing for. What better way to enable this versatility than to use a scalable device family?
A scalable device family is a set…
To meet evolving energy regulations that require lower standby power and higher efficiency, engineers are designing power supplies that use light-load modes such as burst-mode operation. Although light-load modes help minimize standby power, they introduce a new challenge: the potential for the power-supply magnetics to emit high-pitch ringing. If…
Power over Ethernet (PoE) is a long-established – and well-adopted – power delivery technology that injects power over 100 m of standard CAT 5 Ethernet cable. This technology radically simplified installation for end equipment such as Internet Protocol (IP) phones, wireless access points for Wi-Fi® connections and IP cameras, and provides features such as power redundancy and smooth power-source transitions (also called…
As reviewed in my earlier article, accurate monitoring of battery voltage, current and temperature is necessary to ensure the safe operation of battery-powered systems such as vacuum cleaners, power tools and e-bikes. In this article, I will focus on voltage monitoring of lithium-based batteries.
A key requirement of safety standards for lithium-based battery systems is that…
Electromagnetic noise is any type of unwanted electromagnetic energy that contains sufficient intensity to distort a signal. When designing high-performance data-acquisition applications or any system with particularly sensitive signal paths, noise is therefore the opponent to beat.
On the power-supply side, high-efficiency DC/DC converters can be significant sources of noise due…
Automotive camera module designers have to balance reducing time to market while creating ever-smaller camera module designs that are scalable and reusable for various types of image serializers and sensors. In this article, I will address several key design challenges for automotive camera module designs, including design simplification and platform scalability.
Simplify design…
This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC). It’s a perfect reason to take a trip down memory lane when it comes to power-supply design for system-on-chip (SoC) applications, such as communication base stations, test and measurement equipment or data centers.
While designing thermally optimized power supplies has never been…
Single-board computers for industrial applications once functioned only as a simple logic controller for handling a human machine interface (HMI), providing various control functions and network communication. Today, single-board computers act as the brain of complex systems used in industrial robotics, machine vision and factory automation.
To deliver the processing required, current-generation single-board computers…
From exploding demo boards to the first-ever session on gate drivers, APEC has evolved over the last 35 years from a small conference for power design enthusiasts to the world’s largest gathering of leading power experts and power design innovators. Read the memories of our APEC veterans to get a glimpse of what APEC was like 35 years ago, and how the show, TI and the power industry…
As we reviewed in my article, Next-generation battery monitors: how to improve battery safety while improving accuracy and extending runtime, accurate monitoring of battery voltage, current and temperature can help ensure safe operation of systems for popular consumer products, including vacuum cleaners, power tools and e-bikes. In this article, we will take a deeper look…
As I discussed in the first installment of this series, one option to control output voltage (VOUT) for USB Type-C Power Delivery (PD) and wireless charging applications is to use switching resistors. This article will explain a different approach that requires fewer components and signal lines called modulated voltage programming.
Modulated voltage programming
You may recall from part 1 that switching resistors require…
Power architecture designs for space applications have historically lagged behind the commercial world due to the complexity of designing radiation-hardened integrated circuits (ICs). Today, the situation is changing rapidly. Developments in 5G technology are fueling the need for more bandwidth and global Internet coverage, pushing many countries to launch higher…
While you may already have a good idea of what isolation is, perhaps you have questions about the various types. In this technical article, I’ll define the four major types of isolation and explain how engineers can benefit from TI’s new fully integrated transformer technology, which delivers several advantages compared to other reinforced isolation solutions.
…For applications using USB Type-C Power Delivery (PD) and wireless charging, the output voltage (VOUT) from the charger can fluctuate higher or lower than the input voltage. Four-switch buck-boost regulators are popular in these applications because adjusting their feedback signal can dynamically change the VOUT.
A buck-boost regulator’s output voltage can be adjusted either…
As the factory automation and control equipment market evolves, shipments of equipment with sensors such as field transmitters, machine vision and position sensors are increasing. As a result, the demand for feature-rich power integrated circuits (ICs) that could power these devices is also growing.
Figure 1 shows a block diagram of a temperature transmitter. The nonisolated power…
For aspiring electrical engineering students trying to decide what to specialize in, I strongly encourage considering power electronics. Every new electrical or electronic product needs a power supply – talk about job security! Despite what you might think, the field is full of challenging work and opportunity for innovation, driven by the quest for smaller devices and higher efficiency.
It may not be as sexy as…
In recent years, consumer products like vacuum cleaners, power tools (such as drills, saws and screwdrivers) and garden tools (like mowers, edgers and lawn tractors) have moved from being corded and wall-powered to cordless and operating from rechargeable battery packs. Even previously unpowered devices like bicycles are now transitioning to battery-powered e-bikes and e…
Significant decreases in the size of power integrated circuits (ICs) have enabled system designers to achieve reductions in power-supply solution size and cost, which is imperative to furthering the development of advanced systems in the automotive industry. However, one challenge that arises from this trend is impaired thermal performance. Without a thoughtful printed circuit board…
Modern factories and other industrial settings consist of a rich mesh of interconnected machines that themselves include devices such as networked computers, programmable logic controllers, input/output cards, field transmitters, sensors, and a collection of wired and wireless communications networks. The amount of data generated and communicated within factory environments has increased dramatically in the last few years…
Designers will often use a transient voltage suppression (TVS) diode to clamp large surge currents to a safe voltage level in order to protect nearby components from damage. In many ways, a TVS diode behaves like a Zener diode, but with a higher power-rating capability because of its larger die size and stronger wire bonding.
Why do hot-swap applications need a TVS diode?
In a hot-swap application, if there is a large…
Electronic technology has advanced so that an electronic control unit (ECU) is required to control the functions of full LED automotive headlights. An ECU consists of mainly LED drivers for headlight functions such as high beams, low beams, daytime running lights, position lights, turn indicators and fog lights. In this article, I’ll explain the advantage of having a flexibly…
The Industry 4.0 revolution enables the capture and analysis of data about various machines, resulting in faster, more flexible, more reliable and more efficient processes to produce higher-quality goods at lower costs. Industry 4.0 does create some challenges at the system level, however, for engineers designing power supplies with DC/DC step-down regulators…
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