Download Adaptive switching frequency buck DC–DC converter with high

Vol. 36, No. 5
Journal of Semiconductors
May 2015
Adaptive switching frequency buck DC–DC converter with high-accuracy on-chip
current sensor
Jiang Jinguang(江金光)Ž , Huang Fei(黄飞), and Xiong Zhihui(熊智慧)
Global Navigation Satellite System Research Center, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
Abstract: A current-mode PWM buck DC–DC converter is proposed. With the high-accuracy on-chip current sensor, the switching frequency can be selected automatically according to load requirements. This method improves
efficiency and obtains an excellent transient response. The high accuracy of the current sensor is achieved by a
simple switch technique without an amplifier. This has the direct benefit of reducing power dissipation and die
size. Additionally, a novel soft-start circuit is presented to avoid the inrush current at the starting up state. Finally,
this DC–DC converter is fabricated with the 0.5 m standard CMOS process. The chip occupies 3.38 mm2 . The
accuracy of the proposed current sensor can achieve 99.5% @ 200 mA. Experimental results show that the peak
efficiency is 91.8%. The input voltage ranges from 5 to 18 V, while a 2 A load current can be obtained.
Key words: DC–DC; switching frequency; current sensor; soft-start; wide load range
DOI: 10.1088/1674-4926/36/5/055005
EEACC: 2570
1. Introduction
The DC–DC converter is in great demand in the field of
electric power conversionŒ1 because of its characteristics such
as high efficiency, high electric power, extending battery life
and providing various supply voltages.
In order to design high efficiency DC–DC integrated circuits, numerous methods are introduced. Firstly, a well-known
strategy of the sleeping mode by shutting down the unused
partial circuitŒ2 is used to reduce the power consumption; it
can only enhance efficiency in standby mode but no power
can be saved in active mode. Besides, the synchronous rectifier technology is used to achieve a fast transient responseŒ3 ,
but it has high conduction loss and gate drive loss at light
load. Another way, by disabling the negative inductor current at light loadŒ4 , can also improve the efficiency; regrettably, it takes more occupied volumeŒ5 . Since PFM (pulse frequency modulation), which regulates the converter under light
load, while PWM (pulse width modulation) regulates the converter under heavy load, can effectively reduce the power consumption, a hybrid mode converter that integrates both PWM
and PFM controllersŒ6 is presented in a single chip. However,
the efficiency declines when the load is at a medium range.
To solve this problem, a multi-mode converter including three
modesŒ7 is introduced, whereas it increases the complexity of
the circuit configuration. All converters mentioned above utilize one mode or multi-mode to improve efficiency, however,
they greatly increase the complexity of the circuit design and
consume more chip area. The transition response performance
is also affected.
A high-accuracy current sensor is essential to design advanced DC–DC converters. It can not only protect the system from large current but also regulate the control loop bet-
ter. Diverse current sensors on-chip and off-chip are developed
in previous work. The most common way is using an external resistor in series with the inductor or power transistorsŒ8 ;
unfortunately, it enlarges the size and suffers from low efficiency. To make an improvement, the method of applying the
on-resistance of the power MOSFET instead of the sensing resistors is illustratedŒ9 ; however, the turn-on resistance easily
varies with the process, and that will reduce the precision. Another typical means is the integrator techniqueŒ10 by utilizing
the inductor voltage to measure the current, but when topologies differ, the design becomes complicated. In order to achieve
high accuracy, an amplifierŒ11 is added. Nevertheless, the current sensor suffers from supply voltage limitation. Fortunately,
the problem is solved by a low-voltage circuitŒ12 , but the accuracy is limited by the finite gain and bandwidth of the amplifier. Lately, the amplifier is replaced by fewer transistorsŒ13 ,
whereas the current sources need extra recovering time from
OFF station to ON station. This recovering time issue is settled by adding several switchesŒ14 , nevertheless, it still has a
sensing current even though the power MOSFET turns off. Finally, the problem of outputting a sensing current when power
MOSFET turns off is eliminated with further improvementŒ7 .
However, when the power MOSFET turns on, the system may
enter into an unbalanced station.
In this paper, a current-mode PWM buck DC–DC converter is proposed. This converter focuses on saving die size
and achieving high efficiency without sacrificing transient response performance. The converter abandons the multi-mode
structure and uses two switching frequencies. The switching
frequency can be automatically selected when the load current
varies. The converter operates at high frequency under a heavy
load while at low frequency under a light load, thus the power
balance can be ensured. For that, a lower switching frequency
* Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41274047), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province
(No. BK2012639), the Science and Technology Enterprises in Jiangsu Province Technology Innovation Fund (No. BC2012121), and the
Changzhou Science and Technology Support (Industrial) Project (No. CE20120074).
† Corresponding author. Email: jgjiang09@aliyun.com
Received 21 October 2014, revised manuscript received 5 December 2014
© 2015 Chinese Institute of Electronics
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Jiang Jinguang et al.
Figure 1. Block diagram of the proposed PWM DC–DC buck converter.
in PWM mode reduces switching lossesŒ15 , the efficiency is
enhanced effectively. This method greatly simplifies the circuit implementation and reduces the occupied volume. What is
more, the load transient response is improved efficiently. The
proposed current sensor has no amplifier, and it only utilizes a
simple switch technique to achieve high accuracy without increasing the quiescent current. This has the direct benefit of
reducing power dissipation and die size. The current sensor
solves both the problem of outputting sensing current when
the power MOSFET turns off and the problem of an unbalanced station, referred to above. In order to suppress the inrush
current at the starting up state, a novel soft-start circuit is designed for the converter. Moreover, the soft-start time can be
controlled by the capacitor with various sizes. In addition, this
converter utilizes two NMOS switches as the power transistors
to save the die area and to improve the efficiency.
2. System configuration
As shown in Figure 1, the proposed DC–DC buck converter is composed of a power stage and a control network. All
functional modules including MOSFET power switches are integrated on a single chip.
The two off-chip resistors RF1 and RF2 scale down Vout to
VFB . The error amplifier (EA) compares VREF1 with VFB , and
amplifies the difference of these two voltages. Then an error
signal Vea is obtained and fed to Comparator 1, which is compared with Vcc . VPWM regulates the PWM control module to
generate a variable signal of the duty ratio. This variable signal drives the driver logic control module to control the ontime and off-time duration of the power transistors. When the
load condition changes, the current sensor detects the inductor current and converts it into Vsense . Then Comparator 2 compares Vsense with VREF2 to build SWTH. SWTH controls the frequency selection module, and an appropriate clock pulse CLK
is chosen as the switching frequency.
The converter has other necessary modules, among which,
the soft-start module is used for start-up protection to suppress
the inrush current. In order to protect the circuit from damage,
some safety operations such as over current protection (OCP)
and over voltage protection (OVP) are performed. Another essential module is the oscillator. It provides different clocks for
the entire system. In addition, the Bandgap & Bias module
provides the reference voltages and reference currents for the
whole system.
3. Circuit implementation
3.1. High accuracy on-chip current sensor
To ensure that the converter’s automatic frequency selection operates well, the current variation on the power MOSFET
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Figure 2. The proposed current sensor.
has to react entirely on the current loop with this highly accurate current sensor. Figure 2 is the schematic of the proposed
current sensor, and Figure 3 is the two different operating states
of the current sensor.
As shown in Figure 2, Q and Q’ come from the driver logic
control. The current sensor is realized by matching transistor
MS and the power transistor MN1 in the power stage. The
aspect ratio of MS is much smaller than that of MN1. MS is
implemented by four identical series MOSFETs in the dashed
box, so the sensed current does not need an additional circuit
to be further scaled down from the load current. Thus the chip
area can be reduced to the utmost. Both MC2 and MC3 are biased by Iref generated from the Bandgap; they act as current
sources and build identical currents I1 and I2 .
As shown in Figure 3(a), when the circuit is under the ONstate, Q is high while Q’ is low. MN1, MS, MQ1 and MQ3
are turned on. MN2, MV and MQ2 are turned off. The node
voltage Va is connected to the source of MN1, so Va is equal
to VX . VGS of MC4 is maintained constant as I2 is constant. So
VC follows the variation of Va . Because I1 and I2 are identical,
VGS of MC5 is the same as the VGS of MC4. That means Vb is
equal to Va . Then the voltages in the source of MS and MN1
are identical.
If the relationship of the aspect ratio between MS and MN1
is 1 : K (K in this paper is 1500), there are the following equationsŒ16 :
1
W
IL D n cox K
2
L MS
i
h
(1)
2 VgsMN1 jVTN j VsdMN1 Vsd2M ;
N1
Is D
1
n cox
2
W
L
h
MS
2 VgsMS
jVTN j VsdMS
Vsd2M
S
i
:
MN1 and MS will always meet:
VsdMN1 D VsdMS ;
(3)
VgsMN1 D VgsMS :
(4)
Considering the mismatches of MS and MN1, they are
mainly from the threshold voltage mismatches. If the threshold voltage of MS has a tiny variation of VTN , Equation (2)
can be expressed as:
1
W
Is D n cox
2
L MS
h
i
2 VgsMS jVTN j VTN VsdMS Vsd2M :
(5)
S
The following equation can be obtained.
2
1 6
Is
61 C D
IL
K4
VgsMN1
VTN
jVTN j
1
Vsd
2 MN1
3
7
7
5:
(6)
Meanwhile
VTN VgsMN1
jVTN j
1
Vsd :
2 MN1
(7)
So
Is
1
D :
(8)
IL
K
As can be seen from Equation (8), IS /IL is constant and
independent of VTN , so the influence from the mismatches of
MS and MN1 can be ignored.
In that
I1 D I2 IL ; Is :
(9)
(2)
According to the function of the proposed current sensor,
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There are following conclusions:
Isense D Is D
IL
;
K
(10)
J. Semicond. 2015, 36(5)
Jiang Jinguang et al.
Figure 3. (a) ON-state of current sensor. (b) Off-state of current sensor.
Vsense D Isense Rsense :
Table 1. Switching frequency under different loads.
Load
Vsense
SWTH
CLK
Heavy
Large
0
OSC1
Light
Small
1
OSC2
(11)
As can be seen from Equation (10), Isense is reduced with K
times of IL , which guarantees high accuracy. The sum current
of I1 and I2 is just 6 A, therefore, the efficiency will not be
reduced by this current sensor.
The proposed current sensor has better performance compared to the current sensor in Reference [6], since it has two
problems. The first is that the current sensor in Reference [6]
has two current branches, and each branch has two current
sources. When the power MOSFET turns on, the two current
sources up and down in one branch will be affected by the voltage of the power MOSFET, and it will result in the system entering into a unbalanced station, which is fatal to the system.
The second problem is that the current sensed by the current sensor in Reference [6] is still too large for the mode controller, so it has to be scaled down. It indicates that an additional VTI (voltage to current) circuit should be added. The
VTI circuit occupies chip area and increases energy consumption, while the proposed current sensor only uses two current
sources to establish the circuit, and it has no instability issues.
The sensing current is small enough, so it doesn’t need additional circuit to scale down. So the proposed current sensor
saves chip area and reduces consumption, which is important
for improving efficiency and enhancing circuit stability.
In Figure 3(b), when the circuit is under the OFF-state, the
voltage of Q is low while Q’ is high. MN1, MS, MQ1 and MQ3
are turned off. MN2, MV and MQ2 are turned on. MV provides
a current path for MC2 and MC3. Va and Vb will be pulled up to
approach Vin . Since MQ3 is turned off, Isense will be zero. In the
next ON station, Va and Vb will follow Vx quickly because I1
and I2 has not been cut-off, thus it will take no time to recover
to the normal current.
The current sensor in Reference [13] still has a sensing current even though the power MOSFET turns off, because the
sensing MOSFET is not totally turned off. Fortunately, the proposed current sensor solves this problem. It adds a switch to cut
off the road of the sensing MOSFET, Mrs, so the sensing current is zero when the power MOSFET turns off. The recovering
time problem is also avoided, so the performance is improved.
The proposed current sensor solves the unbalanced problemŒ6 and has no outputting sensing current when the power
MOSFET turns offŒ13 , it achieves better performance. Due
to the simple implementation technology without any cascade
MOSFET or amplifier, the current sensor has high accuracy,
low power consumption and small die area, therefore it can be
widely used in very low voltage applications.
3.2. Switching frequency controller
In order to realize a DC–DC converter with a simple implementation method and high efficiency, two switching frequencies are used to control the system under different load
conditions. The block diagram of the switching frequency controller is presented in Figure 4. PD is an external signal while
OSC1, OSC2 and Vsense are internal. The converter’s switching
frequency is decided by VREF2 generated by the Bandgap. The
switching frequency selection circuit operates when PD is at
low voltage level.
The current sensor detects the current of the inductor to
generate a sensed voltage (Vsense /. When the convert is under
the heavy load condition, the sensed current will become larger.
That will make Vsense become larger than VREF , and a low voltage level will occur at the output of COM. The fact results
that OSC1 is chosen as the switching frequency. For the same
reason, when the convert is under the light load condition, the
switching frequency will be OSC2.
When IL > 150 mA, the load current is heavy and Vsense is
large. When IL < 150 mA, the load current is light and Vsense
is small. The relationship between the converter’s switching
frequency and load condition is shown in Table 1.
The sensed current is sampled by the current sensor cycle
by cycle, the system’s switching frequency can be chosen dy-
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Figure 5. The proposed soft-start circuit.
Figure 4. The controller of switching frequency selection.
Figure 6. Schematic of the oscillator.
namically when the load is updated in every switch cycle. The
converter can obtain more rapid response and higher efficiency
than that of multi-mode converters. Moreover, the whole system has a simpler and more stable structure.
level and EA is shut down. VinC is rising by charging CSS until
it is up to Vin , then VEN outputs a low voltage level. The result
is that EA starts to operate, that means the soft-start process has
been done.
The soft-start time (tss / can be calculated as
3.3. Soft-start circuit
A novel soft-start circuit is utilized to generate a steadily
rising voltage in this paper. The soft-start circuit is different
from the conventional one by controlling the enable of the error
amplifier. Moreover, the soft start time can be controlled by
the capacitor with various sizes. As illustrated in Figure 5, it
consists of a current source and a comparator. Vbias2 and Vin
come from the bandgap.
At the beginning, VinC is zero, VEN is at the high voltage
tss D
Css Vin
:
Icharge
(12)
The charging time can be chosen autonomously according
to different sizes of CSS .
3.4. Oscillator
The oscillator is used to generate the clocks for the switching frequencies. Figure 6 is the schematic of the oscillator, it
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Figure 7. The proposed slope compensation circuit.
can generate three main clocks.
Part I includes two current sources and a hysteretic comparator to build a clock signal CLKout. Part II includes a frequency divider for generating OSC1, OSC2 and OSCslope.
3.5. Slope compensation circuit
When the PWM duty cycle is above 50%, the fixed frequency current-mode buck converters require a linear ramp to
avoid sub-harmonic oscillationŒ17 . An artificial ramp can be
added as a slope compensation to suppress the sub-harmonic
oscillation. The slope compensation circuit of the proposed
converter is shown in Figure 7.
4. Simulation and measurement results
The proposed DC–DC converter is fabricated in 0.5 m
standard CMOS process. The chip microphotograph and the
experimental board of the proposed DC–DC converter are
shown in Figure 8. The chip size is 1.735 1.950 mm2 and the
two power MOSFETs occupy 1.507 1.179 mm2 . This DC–
DC converter is simulated with Cadence Spectre and measured
by a digital oscilloscope Agilent DS07104A.
Figure 8. (a) Chip microphotograph. (b) Experimental board.
4.1. Simulation results
Figure 9 shows the simulation results of the current sensor
in Figure 2, K is 1500. When Q is at the high voltage level, an
accurate sensing current Isense is obtained, but no output current
can be observed while Q is low. The maximum accuracy can
achieve 99.5% when the load is nearly 200 mA. The simulation
results are well consistent with the theoretical estimation.
Figure 10 shows the simulation results of the switching frequency controller in Figure 4. When IL < 150 mA, the switching frequency operates at 125 kHz. When IL > 150 mA, the
switching frequency operates at 500 kHz.
Figure 11 shows the simulation result of the oscillator in
Figure 5. CLKout is 1 MHz, OSC1 is 500 kHz, and OSC2 is
125 kHz.
Figure 12 shows the different conversion times about the
soft-start circuit with various capacitors. Vin D 1 V, Icharge 6 A, when VinC D 1 V, VEN turns to the low voltage level.
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Figure 9. Simulation results of the current sensor.
J. Semicond. 2015, 36(5)
Jiang Jinguang et al.
Figure 10. Frequency selection under different load conditions.
Figure 11. The waveform of different oscillation frequencies.
Figure 12. Soft-start time with various capacitors.
Table 2 gives the simulation results of the soft-start time
and the capacitor’s value; the results are in accordance with
Equation (12).
Figure 13 gives the simulation results of the system’s dynamic performance when IL steps from 100 to 1500 mA. Vin
D 12 V, and the output voltage is about 3.7 V. When the converter operates at light load station, the switching frequency is
Figure 13. (a) 1500 to 100 mA load step. (b) 100 to 1500 mA load
step.
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Capacitor
value (nF)
Starting
time (ms)
1
0.16
Jiang Jinguang et al.
Table 2. Soft-start time.
3.25
5.5
0.51
0.86
7.75
10
1.21
1.56
Figure 16. Measured load transient of 1400 mA step.
Figure 14. Measured input voltage range.
Figure 17. Measured efficiency.
frequency and achieve outstanding transient response performance.
Figure 17 is the converter’s measured efficiency. When the
load range varies from 0.1 to 2000 mA, the overall efficiency
is over 75% and the peak efficiency is 91.8%.
Table 3 lists the performance of this converter and the comparison with some relevant designsŒ18 20 .
Figure 15. Measured soft-start waveform.
low and IL is small; when the converter operates at heavy load
station, the switching frequency is high and IL is large. The
results fully comply with the designed requirements.
4.2. Measurement results
Figure 14 shows the test results of the converter’s input
voltage range. When Vin is about 5 V, the convert can obtain
3.7 V output voltage. Vout remains a stable voltage of 3.7 V
while Vin varies from 5 to 18 V. When Vin is higher than 18 V,
the converter’s over voltage protection (OVP) operates. The results indicate that the converter has a wide input voltage range
from 5 to 18 V.
The soft-start test results are shown in Figure 15. It is easy
to achieve a soft-start time of 1.9 ms when the capacitor is
10 nF.
Figure 16 gives the converter’s transition results. The output voltage is 3.7 V and the input voltage is 12 V. When IL
steps from 100 to 1500 mA, the converter’s switching frequency changes from low to high. The output voltage variation is as low as 2 mV, the maximum output voltage ripple is
14 mV, the load response is 53 mV at 1400 mA step. The results
show that the converter can automatically select its switching
5. Conclusions
A current-mode PWM buck DC–DC converter is presented in this paper. The proposed converter can automatically
select the switching frequency according to the load current
condition. In addition, a highly accurate on-chip current sensor
is adopted to solve the problem of outputting sensing current
when the power MOSFET turns off and the recovering time
problem without unbalanced issues. The novel soft-start circuit can achieve a soft-start time of 1.9 ms easily. The maximum load current of this converter is 2 A with a wide input
voltage range from 5 to 18 V. Its maximum output voltage ripple is 14 mV and the load response is 53 mV at 1400 mA step.
Experimental results show that the peak efficiency is 91.8%.
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J. Semicond. 2015, 36(5)
Jiang Jinguang et al.
Table 3. Performance list and comparison with other designs.
Parameter
This work
Reference [18]
Reference [19]
Year
2014
2008
2011
Process (m)
0.5
0.35
0.35
Die size (mm2 /
3.38
3.57
4.70
Input voltage (V)
5–18
2.7–5
2.3–4.8
Output voltage (V)
1–15
>1
0.6–1.8
Load capability (mA)
2000
460
1500
Switching frequency (MHz)
0.125–0.5
0.1–0.6
10
Load transient (mV @ mA)
53 @ 1400
—
8 @ 200
Load regulation (mV/A)
1.5
—
10
Output ripple (mV)
14
36
20
Efficiency (%)
75–91.8
71–95
81–88.4
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