Dithering skip modulator with a width controller for ultra-wride-load high-efficiency DC-DC converters

Abstract

This paper proposes a temperature-independent load sensor to decide the optimum power MOSFET width for power saving of DC-DC converters. Besides, it also can decide the optimum modulation technique in tri-mode operation, which is composed of pulse-width modulation (PWM), pulse-frequency modulation (PFM), and a new proposed dithering sldp modulation (DSM). An efficiency-improving DSM operation is introduced to raise the efficiency drop because of transition from PWM to PFM. Importantly, DSM mode can dynamically sldp the number of gate driving pulses, which is inverse proportional to load current. Simplistically and qualitatively stated, the novel load sensor can automatically select the optimum modulation method and optimum power MOSFET width to achieve high efficiency over a wide load range. Experimental results show the tri-mode operation can have high efficiency about 89 % over a wide load current range from 3mA to 500mA. Owing to the effective mitigation of the switching loss contributed by large power MOSFET, the novel width controller not only achieves high efficiency about 95 % but also extends this high efficiency to a lower load current range about 0.1mA.