US 2013/0093489 A1Published application

Signal converter equipped with overvoltage protection mechanism

OwnerChun-Wei Lin, Bing-Shiun Hsiehinventors

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Abstract

A signal converter equipped with an overvoltage protection mechanism includes a pulse width modulation unit, a timing processing unit, an overvoltage detection unit, a pulse width control unit and a multi-level conversion unit. The pulse width modulation unit converts an analog signal into a pulse signal. The timing processing unit converts the pulse signal into a digital signal and outputs the digital signal to the overvoltage detection unit. When the digital signal is higher than the maximum limitation or less than the minimum limitation, the overvoltage detection unit outputs an over-threshold signal to the pulse width control unit to allow the pulse width modulation unit to perform feedback adjustment and prevent the multilevel conversion unit connected to the timing processing unit from causing burnout of downstream circuits because the multilevel conversion unit outputs maximum power intensity of signal over a long time.

Claims8

Dependent claims

A signal converter equipped with an overvoltage protection mechanism, comprising:

a pulse width modulation unit converting an analog signal into a pulse signal whose width varies with a value of the analog signal;
a timing processing unit connected to the pulse width modulation unit to receive the pulse signal and convert the pulse signal into a digital signal;
an overvoltage detection unit connected to the timing processing unit to receive the digital signal and output an over-threshold signal upon judging that the digital signal is a maximum threshold signal or a minimum threshold signal;
a pulse width control unit respectively connected to the overvoltage detection unit and the pulse width modulation unit to output a control signal to the pulse width modulation unit according to the judgment of the overvoltage detection unit;
and
a multi-level conversion unit connected to the timing processing unit to receive the digital signal and convert the digital signal into a multi-level digital signal to output.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.