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This paper presents a systematic approach to synthetize constant power loads using switching converters under sliding-mode control. The generation of sliding motions is analyzed in converters with a series inductor in the input port and a switching function representing the error between the input power and a suitable power reference. The analysis establishes the existence conditions for sliding-mode and the stability of the resulting ideal dynamics. Simulation and experimental results verifying the theoretical predictions in boost, Ćuk and SEPIC converters illustrate the proposal. The design procedure yields a simple, economical and small-size prototype that can be useful in the experimental validation of converters supplying constant power loads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of IoT applications requires DC-DC converters to have small printed circuit board (PCB) areas and high efficiency over a wide load range. A multi-mode operation of DC-DC converters, therefore, is often necessary to achieve this high efficiency over a wide load range. This paper introduces a tri-mode DC-DC buck converter for IoT applications. The tri-mode operation with PWM, PFM, and multiple-sawtooth PWM (MSPWM) modes helps to retain the high efficiency over the wide load range. The MSPWM mode also enhances a noise margin of the converter, ensuring a regular switching operation at an ultra-light load condition. With a load current prediction scheme, the proposed tri-mode converter requires neither additional load current sensor nor multiple mode controllers. In addition, a soft-start operation is employed to prevent an in-rush current. The proposed tri-mode buck converter has been fabricated through a 0.18- $\mu \text{m}$ CMOS process with a chip area of 0.97 mm $\times0.88$ mm. A load-dependent seamless mode transition is realized, and a maximum converter efficiency of 91% has been measured with a 7.4-MHz switching frequency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposed a high efficiency boost converter targeting thermoelectric generator energy harvesting. The proposed converter adopts the critical conduction mode rather than the discontinuous mode to reduce the conduction loss, which can improve the peak efficiency at high input power. To reduce the minimum input voltage, an adaptive on-resistance switch, which can automatically change the high side and low side on-resistance according to the input voltage, is used. To maximize the output power, a maximum power point tracking circuit is designed to track the internal source resistance. Radio frequency (RF) kick-up and low voltage startup are used to improve the cold start voltage. The proposed converter is implemented in a 0.18- $\mu \text{m}$ standard CMOS process, which occupies a chip area of about 0.48 mm2. Measurement results show that the peak efficiency of the converter can be up to 90.8% and 60% at 180 and 20 mV of the open-circuit voltage, respectively. Owing to the cold startup circuit, the proposed converter can start successfully with 260-mV open-circuit voltage or −16-dBm RF input. Moreover, the open-circuit voltage can be further lowered to 12 mV with 1.5- $\mu \text{W}$ output power after startup. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple-supply are required to minimize the power consumptions in bio-implant systems. A single-inductor multiple-output (SIMO) switching converter is one of the solutions. But it has inherent problems which block the applications in the embedded biomedical systems. In this paper, a circuit arrangement for providing multiple outputs based on low-dropout (LDO) regulator is proposed. The regulating transistor of LDO is time-shared by N output legs. Two error amplifiers (EAs) are utilized in the topology, irrespective of number of the output legs. The corresponding switching strategy alleviates the difficulties associated with controlling multiple switching functions for conventional time-sharing methods, and thus, permits multiple outputs to be generated easily. A prototype multiple-output LDO (MOLDO) regulator with four output legs was fabricated with a standard 0.35 \mu\ m CMOS process. The measurement results verify the good performance of this design such as no cross regulation (CR), small ripples, and less power consumption. Moreover, it does not require inductor and presents low total harmonic distortion, which is very suitable for bio-implant fields. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper deals with the system oriented analysis, design, modeling, and implementation of active clamp HF link three phase converter. The main advantage of the topology is reduced size, weight, and cost of the isolation transformer. However, violation of basic power conversion rules due to presence of the leakage inductance in the HF transformer causes over voltage stresses across the cycloconverter devices. It makes use of the snubber circuit necessary in such topologies. The conventional RCD snubbers are dissipative in nature and hence inefficient. The efficiency of the system is greatly improved by using regenerative snubber or active clamp circuit. It consists of an active switching device with an anti-parallel diode and one capacitor to absorb the energy stored in the leakage inductance of the isolation transformer and to regenerate the same without affecting circuit performance. The turn on instant and duration of the active device are selected such that it requires simple commutation requirements. The time domain expressions for circuit dynamics, design criteria of the snubber capacitor with two conflicting constrains (over voltage stress across the devices and the resonating current duration), the simulation results based on generalized circuit model and the experimental results based on laboratory prototype are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Computation of periodic steady state in nonlinear circuits is a key issue. Power electronics converters represent an interesting class of switched nonlinear circuits. The behavior of the converter is obtained by the commutations of the electronic devices which determine the switchings among the different converter modes. Switchings can be classified as external, if forced by directly manipulable control variables, and internal if determined by state dependent conditions. The presence of internal switchings makes it difficult to know a priori the sequence of modes and also open loop steady-state behaviors are difficult to be obtained. In this paper the complementarity modeling framework is proposed as a possible approach for computing periodic steady-state oscillations in power converters with internal switchings. It is shown how linear complementarity systems can be used to model the behavior of a wide class of power converters. The discretization of such model allows to formulate a static complementarity problem whose solution provides the steady-state oscillation of the converter. It is proved that the backward zero-order-hold technique preserves passivity through the discretization and allows to determine the unique solution of the complementarity problem. A resonant converter and a dc/dc voltage-mode controlled buck converter are used as examples. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes a small-signal model for variable-switching-frequency hysteretic converters operating in continuous conduction mode (CCM) and discontinuous conduction mode (DCM). The model is capable of predicting flip-bifurcation phenomena when the hysteretic converter operates below the CCM/DCM boundary. By developing a discrete-time state-space model of the converter, the z-domain model is derived using the advanced z-transform. Such a tool is suitable to transform in the z-domain signals varying within a switching cycle. A comparison with exact simulations is provided to validate the proposed model. The propagation delay of the feedback control circuit is included due to its significant influence on the low-frequency open-loop gain. Experimental results run on a test chip including a 10-MHz TSMC 0.18\ \mu\m-process hysteretic-mode buck converter are also reported along with the model results. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The general structure of a multilevel multistate dc–dc converter is introduced, which is a hybrid between inductor-based (buck) converters and capacitor-based (switched capacitor) converters. The control of the new converter is hybrid between switched capacitor converters and buck converters, where the coarse tuning of the output voltage is achieved through the selection of an appropriate operating region similar to an SC converter, while fine tuning is achieved through the adjustment of a duty cycle value similar to a buck converter. A silicon implementation of a four-level four-state hybrid converter is presented as a specific example of the general hybrid converter structure. A new state interleaving technique was employed resulting in an increased effective switching frequency of the converter. Silicon measurements of the integrated four-level four-state converter on a 65-nm GF technology show that the converter can cover a wide range of output voltage values achieving a peak efficiency of 93% with a power density of 47 mW/mm2. The implemented converter attains a response time in the sub- ${\mu }\text{s}$ range with output voltage ripples below 50 mV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates sufficient conditions for the convergence to zero of the trajectories of linear switched systems. We provide a collection of results that use weak dwell-time, dwell-time, strong dwell-time, permanent and persistent activation hypothesis. The obtained results are shown to be tight by counterexample. Finally, we apply our result to the three-cell converter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a general critical condition of subharmonic oscillation in terms of the loop gain, many closed-form critical conditions for various control schemes in terms of converter parameters are derived. Some previously known critical conditions become special cases in the generalized framework. Given an arbitrary control scheme, a systematic procedure is proposed to derive the critical condition for that control scheme. Different control schemes share similar forms of critical conditions. For example, both V^2 control and proportional voltage mode control have the same form of critical condition. A peculiar phenomenon in average current mode control where subharmonic oscillation occurs in a window value of pole can be explained by the derived critical condition. A ripple amplitude index to predict subharmonic oscillation proposed in the past research has limited application and is shown invalid for a converter with a large pole comparable to the switching frequency. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A dual modulation technique to improve power conversion efficiency with minimal increase in output voltage ripple is presented. The worsening switching noise caused by parasitic resistance and inductance due to high-switching operation can also be alleviated by the proposed ac ripple detector. Furthermore, the dual modulation method can speed up the load transient response since the switching frequency can increase to 5 MHz during the transient period. At very light loads, the switching frequency is always kept higher than the acoustic frequency to avoid noisy sound. Experiment results show that the converter operates at 5 MHz using a small inductor of 1 \mu \H. The load transient response time is shorter than 3 \mu \s when load current changes from 150 to 450 mA or vice versa. Power efficiency is kept higher than 85% over a wide load current range. Specifically, light efficiency can be raised to about 45% above that of the conventional design. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]