Design of a low-voltage low-power dc-dc HF converter

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 230-234).Many portable electronic applications could benefit from a power converter able to achieve high efficiency across wide input and output voltage ranges at a small size. However, it is difficult for many conventional power converter designs to provide wide operation range while maintaining high efficiency, especially if both up-and-down voltage conversion is to be achieved. Furthermore, the bulk energy storage required at contemporary switching frequencies of a few megahertz and below limits the degree of miniaturization that can be achieved and hampers fast transient response. Therefore, design methods that reduce energy storage requirements and expand efficient operation range are desirable. This thesis focuses on the development of a High Frequency (HF) dc-dc SEPIC converter exploiting resonant switching and gating with fixed frequency control techniques to achieve these goals. The proposed approach provides high efficiency over very wide input and output voltage ranges and power levels. It also provides up-and-down conversion, and requires little energy storage which allows for excellent transient response. The proposed design strategies are discussed in the context of a prototype converter operating over wide input voltage (3.6 - 7.2V), output voltage (3 - 9V) and power (0.3 - 3W) ranges. The 20MHz converter prototype, utilizing commercial vertical MOSFETs, takes advantage of a quasi-resonant SEPIC topology and resonant gating technique to provide good efficiency across the wide operating ranges required. The converter efficiency stays above 80% across the entire input voltage range at the nominal output voltage. The closed-loop performance is demonstrated via an implementation of a PWM on-off control scheme, illustrating the salient characteristics in terms of additional control circuitry power dissipation and transient response.by Jingying Hu.S.M

Design of low-voltage, high-bandwidth radio frequency power converters

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 158-166).The mass and volume required for power electronics circuitry is a dominant obstacle to the miniaturization and integration of many systems. Likewise, power electronics with greater bandwidth and efficiency are becoming vital in many applications. To realize smaller and highly responsive power electronics at low voltages, this thesis explores devices, circuits, and passives capable of operating efficiently at very high frequencies (VHF, 30-300 MHz). Operation at these frequencies enables reduction of the numerical values and physical size of the passive components that dominate power converters, and enables increased bandwidth and transient performance which is valuable in a multitude of low-voltage and low-power applications. This thesis explores the scaling of magnetic component size with frequency, and it is shown that substantial miniaturization is possible with increased frequencies even considering material and heat transfer limitations. Moreover, the impact of frequency scaling of power converters on magnetic components is investigated for different design criteria. Quantitative examples of magnetics scaling are provided that clearly demonstrate the benefits and opportunities in VHF magnetics design. It is shown to utilize the advantages of frequency scaling on passive component size that system losses and other limitations must be considered. One such area that is examined is semiconductor device requirements, where through a combination of device layout optimization for cascode structures and integrated gate drive designs on a 0.35-um CMOS process, converter performance (i.e., loss and bandwidth) can be significantly improved in the VHF regime. In this thesis a dc-dc converter topology is developed that is suitable for low-voltage power conversion and employs synchronous rectification to improve efficiency. The converter is also comprised of a high-bandwidth and high-switching-frequency inverter topology that can dynamically adjust the output power from one-quarter to full power, while maintaining good efficiency. Furthermore, with its inherent capability of gate-width switching, the inverter can further reduce gating loss by one-half resulting in substantial performance improvements at light load operation. A major contribution of this thesis is the development of a synchronous rectifier operating in the VHF regime. VHF power conversion is especially challenging at low voltages due to poor efficiency resulting from rectification loss. To overcome diode rectification loss, the benefits of synchronous rectification are discussed in the context of a 100MHz class-E resonant rectifier, which results in a 2.5 x overall converter efficiency improvement. The culmination of the developed design techniques in passives, semiconductor devices, and circuit topologies is an experimental prototype of a miniaturized 100MHz, 1W power converter utilizing synchronous rectification.by Jingying Hu.Ph.D