Minimizing noise is a common challenge for engineers designing a power supply for noise-sensitive systems for test and measurement and radio applications, such as clocks, data converters or amplifiers. Although the term “noise” can mean different things to different people, in this article I’ll define noise as low-frequency thermal noise generated by resistors and transistors…
You have many options when selecting an isolated gate driver for the power stage in motor-drive applications. Gate drivers can be simple or complex, with features such as an integrated Miller clamp, split outputs or an undervoltage (UVLO) lockout reference to the emitter of an insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT).
There are two options for…
“All-in-one” sounds so nice, doesn’t it? Nothing encompasses the idea of all-in-one more than the Swiss Army knife, which was first introduced to the world back in 1891 and has become something of a legend given its versatility, small size and low cost. This one tool can help solve a variety of daily challenges and is small enough to fit in your pocket. What more could you ask for?
Now picture a factory…
Flow meters use lithium manganese dioxide (LiMnO2) and lithium thionyl chloride (LiSOCl2) batteries as energy sources. LiSOCl2 batteries are popular in flow meters because they provide better energy density and a more efficient cost-per-wattage ratio than LiMnO2 batteries. However, LiSOCI2 batteries have a poor impulse response, which can lead to a large drop in voltage during transient…
The importance and value of power density in modern power-delivery solutions cannot be overstated.
To better understand the fundamental technologies of high-power-density designs, in this article I’ll examine the four most important aspects of high-power-density solutions:
Real-time location systems (RTLS) enhance the lives of consumers and businesses by making everyday routines smarter through accurate, location tracking technology such as GPS and Bluetooth® Low Energy. RTLS trackers eliminate the stress of losing belongings such as luggage or pets using long-distance GPS tracking. RTLS trackers also enhance businesses with…
With the Federal Aviation Administration restricting the size of batteries allowed on airplanes, it can be challenging to design applications with batteries down to 100 Wh. Some companies design applications using two small batteries instead of one to meet the regulations, but having two batteries often requires the implementation of redundant or duplicate power supplies, which…
High resolution and seamless operation are important for larger automotive display screens, shown in Figure 1, as consumers want a clear picture with smooth functionality. Given the harsh environments in vehicles, system reliability and safety are also concerns. As a result, it’s a challenge for designers to find a backlight LED solution that’s designed for larger screens while…
Today’s satellites use complex, high-power field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and processors, challenging power-supply design engineers to create robust power supplies. Many designers end up with complicated designs meant to achieve redundancy (the duplication of critical components to increase reliability), involving dozens of discrete components like field-effect transistors (FETs) to continuously monitor and enable…
USB technology has evolved – from a data interface capable of supplying limited power to a primary power source with an interactive data interface. Today, many devices charge or get their power from USB ports contained in laptops, cars, aircrafts or even wall sockets.
Because of its compact size and ability to both deliver power and transfer data, USB Power Delivery (PD) has…
The buck-boost charger has become increasingly popular in recent years given its ability to charge a battery from nearly any input source, regardless of whether the input voltage is higher or lower than the battery voltage.
One critical benefit of the widespread adoption of USB Type-C is a realistic path to a universal adapter and corresponding e-waste reduction. Although…
Today’s “always-on” consumer wants to charge their portable electronics wherever they are. For example, it’s common to see travelers charging their cellphones, laptops and headphones while waiting to board a flight or hop on a train. But when there are different charging methods for each device, these consumers must carry different adapters, and it can become quite a hassle…
Beauty and personal care products have traditionally been designed with a traditional AC power supply. Therefore, every time consumers use such products, they need to be close to the wall, and any movement and power is restrained by the length of the electrical cord. As modern electronics have evolved, consumers now expect to be able to use personal care products such as a shavers…
Power metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) use a thin oxide to isolate the gate electrode from the active area of the transistor. Much like the MOSFET structures used in the fabrication of microprocessors, a power MOSFET gate oxide is just as susceptible to damage from electrostatic discharge (ESD) as its tinier counterparts. ESD may cause catastrophic failure (such as gate-oxide breakdown) or…
Dan Tooth co-authored this technical article
Your new design needs to fit twice as much into half the space and cost nothing – sound familiar? You selected the smallest point-of-load regulator and generated the tightest layout you could with the most cost-effective passive components. So far so good. But then you look at the output ripple on your critical rails and it’s not what you expected. What’s going on?…
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 an easy…
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