Cascoded high-voltage amplifier
AssigneeAdvanced Energy Industries, Inc.
InventorDonnie William Herman
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A cascoded high-voltage amplifier is disclosed. The amplifier can include a chain of series-coupled low-voltage amplifiers, sometimes with a common gain, where an output of each low-voltage amplifier is coupled to an input of a next low-voltage amplifier, and inputs of adjacent low-voltage amplifiers are coupled via a feedforward connection, and optionally through an impedance component. In this way, a change in the input signal can level shift the entire chain of low-voltage amplifiers through the feedforward connections. The gain of the cascoded high-voltage amplifier can be a function of the number of low-voltage amplifiers, and a high-voltage output can be achieved without seeing high-voltage drops within the amplifier.
Claims19
A high-voltage amplifier comprising:
- a voltage input configured to receive an input voltage;
- a first amplifying cell comprising a first amplifier coupled to the voltage input via a first input and having a first output, configured to amplify the input voltage with a first gain to provide an amplified version of the input voltage at the first output;
- a second amplifying cell comprising a second amplifier having a second output and configured to amplify the first output by a second gain, and having a first feedforward connection between the first input of the first amplifier and a first input of the second amplifier;
- and
- an Nth amplifying cell comprising an Nth−1 amplifier configured to output a high voltage version of the input voltage, wherein N is a number of amplifying cells, and wherein at least the second and Nth amplifying cells are provided power isolated from a grounded source of the power.
An amplifier comprising:
- a voltage input configured to receive an input voltage;
- a first variable DC source coupled to the voltage input and having a first output, having a first gain, and configured to amplify the input voltage and to provide an amplified version of the input voltage at the first output;
- a second variable DC source configured to amplify the first output;
- an Nth variable DC source configured to amplify an output of an Nth−1 variable DC source and to output a high-voltage version of the input voltage,
- wherein N is a number of variable DC sources, and
- wherein feedforward connections between adjacent ones of the variable DC sources level shift subsequent variable DC sources in response to changes to the input voltage.
A method comprising:
- receiving a low-voltage signal from a signal source at a first time;
- powering a chain of N low-voltage amplifiers via voltage regulators that are isolated from a power supply of the voltage regulators;
- amplifying the low-voltage signal via the chain of low-voltage amplifiers coupled in series to provide a high-voltage output signal to a load, wherein the second through Nth−1 low-voltage amplifiers are floating;
- receiving a change in the low-voltage signal from the signal source at a second time;
- and
- level shifting the low-voltage amplifiers, in response to the change, via feedforward connections between inputs of adjacent ones of the low-voltage amplifiers, to provide a correspondingly changed high-voltage output signal to the load.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.