SMVM-based non-isolated buck controller for PoL DC/DC conversion
Avatekh Inc ("AvaTekh") is developing and commercializing its proprietary cutting-edge technology and R&D, with both military and consumer market applications. AvaTekh's particular expertise is in the field of time-variant filtering and nonlinear signal processing, with the main focus on adaptive nonlinear algorithms and circuits for improving physical, commercial, and operational properties of electronic devices. AvaTekh undertakes the design and development of these concepts in a manner incorporating systematic recipes for their optimization in various practical deployments, facilitating their subsequent hardware implementation and integration into a variety of highly commercially viable scientific, industrial, and consumer products
In the course of work funded in part by an SBIR Phase I/IB grant from the National Science Foundation "Adaptive analog nonlinear circuits for improving properties of electronic devices", while addressing the potential for improvement in electromagnetic compatibility through the reduction in the electromagnetic interference (EMI) produced by Switched-Mode Power Supplies (SMPSs), AvaTekh modified its nonlinear, time variant filtering configurations to address various SMPS challenges. The newly developed SMPS control topologies and regulation techniques provide, in addition to a significant reduction in the EMI generated by SMPSs, a wide range of other technical and commercial advantages, including simplicity of construction and use, and low cost (e.g. low bill of materials (BOM) and number of external components)
An SMPS is typically chosen for an application when its weight, efficiency, size, or wide input range tolerance make it preferable to linear power supplies, and thus SMPSs are ubiquitous in consumer electronics, laboratory and medical equipment, scientific instruments, land, air (including the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)), space, and naval vehicles, LED lighting, and central power distribution systems. Many of the SMPS markets are extremely high-volume and thus are very cost-sensitive, and the demands for both power efficiency requirements and cuts in the BOM drive the use of the SMPSs instead of linear power supplies. While having great advantages over linear regulators in efficiency, weight, size, and wide input range tolerance, SMPSs, however, face a number of challenges that increase their complexity (combined with reduced reliability) and cost, complicate their regulation, and limit their use in noise-sensitive applications
While the new AvaTekh control configurations equally well address various SMPS types (for example, buck (step-down), boost (step-up), and buck-boost), the main focus of the presentation that follows is a non-confidential introduction to a non-isolated buck controller based on the Switched-Mode Voltage Mirror (SMVM) topology. While this controller topology will benefit all applications where non-isolated buck converters may be used, we envision that the main target market for this SMVM-based buck controller would be Point-of-Load (PoL) DC/DC conversion in portable low-power applications (e.g. in smartphones, tablets, digital cameras, navigation systems, medical equipment, and other low-power portable devices)
