Switched capacitor dc-to-dc converter and power conversion control methods
AssigneeThe Regents of the University of California
InventorsLoai Galal Bahgat Salem, Patrick Mercier
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A scalable controller circuit that provides faster and simpler regulation of a DC-to-DC converter is provided. Unlike such prior techniques, preferred embodiments do not require any threshold-level generation circuitry or analog compensation circuitry. Preferred embodiments implement a simple control law that requires only a few digital gates. Preferred embodiments can therefore significantly reduce the overhead power consumption and area of the controller in DC-to-DC converters to new levels.
Claims20
A DC-DC converter, comprising:
- a plurality of capacitive converter cells that provide a plurality of conversion ratios;
- and
- an all-digital binary search controller that dynamically switches through a plurality of modes using an outer coarse grain controller search at a clock rate of the converter;
- and
- fine gain control logic to search at a multiple of the clock rate of the converter and set a final conversion ratio using output of the converter as a voltage reference.
A method of performing voltage regulation of a DC-DC conversion from an input voltage to a desired output voltage by selectively configuring a plurality of converter cells using a controller having a comparator and a sequential logic, the method comprising:
- obtaining a target voltage ratio based on the input voltage and the desired output voltage with coarse control that selects a configuration of the plurality of converter cells, and refining the target voltage ratio ratio within a predefined plurality converter conversion ratios by comparing voltage output to the desired output voltage at a higher rate of comparison than the coarse control and selecting a refined configuration of the plurality of converter cells.
A frequency scaled gear train switching voltage regulator and charge feedback integrated circuit, comprising cascaded capacitive cells configured such that flying capacitance of a given stage does not commence gathering new charge until the flying capacitor of a next stage retrieves a present stored charge of the given stage.
A frequency scaled gear train switching voltage regulator and charge feedback integrated circuit having two independent SC converters that can be operated separately with one disabled, in parallel, or independently together.
A recursive resonant switched capacitor DC to DC converter comprising:
- a plurality of capacitive switching stages, wherein each stage lacks a inductor and a final stage is coupled to an output inductor;
- and
- a switching controller to switch stages prior to the final stage at a progressively divided frequency from the resonant frequency;
- wherein capacitance and conductance of the plurality of capacitive switching stages are allocated to minimize resonant frequency changes.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.