Completely digital voltage converter
AssigneeInfineon Technologies AG
InventorChristian Kranz
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A pulsed DC/DC voltage converter has a control loop operating digitally, apart from a digitization element. An output voltage is sampled during an off phase of the switching clock, resulting in a characteristic linear voltage profile. The output voltage is now readjusted in such a way that the linear voltage profile is divided by a predetermined nominal voltage so that a specific fraction of the digitized voltage values is greater than the nominal voltage, and the remainder is less than the nominal voltage.
Claims25
A pulsed voltage converter, comprising:
- an energy storage inductor;
- a switching element connected to the energy storage inductor and driven by a switching clock, said switching element connecting said energy storage inductor to an input voltage and disconnecting said energy storage inductor from the input voltage, in accordance with the switching clock;
- a diode having a first terminal connected to said energy storage inductor and to said switching element, and a second terminal where an output voltage can be tapped off;
- a digitization unit supplying a digital signal representative of a magnitude of the output voltage and connected to said second terminal of said diode;
- and
- a digital control circuit connected to said digitization unit and utilizing a sampling clock for reading the digital signal supplied from said digitization unit resulting in digital signal values, a frequency of the sampling clock being higher than a frequency of the switching clock, said digital control circuit generating a control value from the digital signal values, said digital control circuit having a switching clock generator connected to said switching element and producing the switching clock for driving said switching element, at least one of a duty ratio and the frequency of the switching clock being influenced by the control value.
A method for producing a control value for a pulsed voltage converter, which comprises the steps of:
- sampling an output voltage of the pulsed voltage converter using a sampling clock having a frequency higher than a frequency of a switching clock of the pulsed voltage converter;
- generating the control value by evaluating voltage values obtained during the sampling;
- and
- producing the switching clock in which at least one of a duty ratio and the frequency of the switching clock being influenced by the control value.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.