Session 2

Opening Speech

Is Digital Power Moving Forward?
Patrick Le Fevre, Ericsson Power Modules, Sweden

“Is Digital Power Moving Forward?” The proposed paper is marketing oriented and has for  objective to relate Digital Power to other industries that have faced technology shift; and to review how such new technologies have been market adopted. It also gives the opportunity to pause the debate for a short while and to present what are the facts that make evidence that technology is moving forward. It is now several years since commercial products with ‘added digital performance’ aiming to revolutionize the on-board power industry have been around in the marketplace. The debate around how such products will change the face of the world has never been so intense. Energized by the marketing buzz surrounding ‘the new power revolution’, many articles and column inches have often forcibly expressed the details and benefits of implementing such technology into an industry that has for some time been considered as commodity, and slow moving in terms of innovation when compared to others.

2.2

Good GUIs - Driving Digital Power Management Adoption
Hasmukh Modi, Primarion, USA

User interfaces drive technology. The tipping point for technologies like the PC, the Internet, and e-mail have all centered on user interfaces. Certain technologies, such as digital power conversion, have suffered due to a lack of better interfaces. Power conversion is an arcane specialty and the development has historically been manually intensive. A good graphical user interface (GUI) can help engineers design power systems for IT applications. The presentation will examine real-world design situations and how a good GUI not only makes programming POLs more intuitive; it also organizes your thinking so important details aren’t overlooked. In addition, the presentation will discuss factors contributing to the need for an intuitive GUI, five key features for an effective GUI, applying good GUI design to digital power management, taking the complexity out of power design and using a GUI to take advantage of powerful PMBus commands.

09:30

2.3

Zengyi Lu, Wei Chen, Delta Electronics, China

A novel coupled inductor solution for VRM application is proposed to improve circuit performance including efficiency in steady state and response in transient. Its behaviors has been analyzed deeply and comprehensively, and compared with the other prior coupling schemes. New implementation of coupled inductor has been proposed with one turn for example. Both simulation and experiment are implemented to verify its feasibility and high performance.

Phase-Shifted PWM Converter Control Models for a Phase-Shifted
PWM Converter
Mostafa Khazraee, University of Industry and Sience, Iran

Guy Moxey, Fairchild Semiconductor, USA

Considerable focus has been placed on controller enhancements for low voltage DC/DC synchronous buck designs. Ultra-high switching frequency and fast transient response are two key design considerations that can be achieved through digital or mixed signal control implementation. Although this does represent a significant step forward, the complete system design will only be as good as its weakest part and the vast majority of converter loss is still generated through the discrete implementation of the power train. This paper will explore approaches and improvements within the power train.

Shengming Huang, National Semiconductor, UK

A novel architecture is proposed for implementing output capacitor free LDO regulator. By using both NMOS and PMOS differential input pairs in error amplifier’s first stage of a LDO, a push-pull stage is obtained in its second stage, offering very fast response speed. Test results show this LDO provides comparable performances without using external output capacitor and has additional advantages of fast start-up and no in-rush current compared to a traditional one.

11:10

2.7 

David Wei, Texas Instruments, China

This topic describes the buck boost Li-ion battery charger design application. Resolution of these issues requires attention to both the circuit design and test result.

Power Devices for Sustainable Growth of Power Conversion Applications - State of the Art to Future Trends
Dr. Gourab Majumdar, Mitsubishi Electric, Japan