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Motivation for High-Vin Converters and Fundamentals

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Integrated High-Vin Multi-MHz Converters

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Abstract

This chapter compares the system requirements for automotive, server, and other applications and shows the demand for an increasing system supply voltage. System level aspects for voltage converters, supplying electrical components, demonstrate the advantage for smaller size and efficiency of a single-step conversion to the point-of-load. A review of different DC-DC converter architectures reveals that inductive switching converters and hybrid architectures are most beneficial for these system level requirements. Buck converter fundamentals point out the impact of design parameters as the switching frequency, current ripple, or conversion ratio on the converter size and efficiency. Soft-switching and resonant converters and their benefit for efficiency are introduced. The scaling of commercial filter inductors and capacitors with respect to design parameters is presented. A review of commercially available and published state-of-the-art converters indicates the structural limitation of switching frequencies towards 30 MHz for input voltages as high as 50 V.

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    Jürgen Wittmann

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Appendix

Appendix

Figure 2.20 depicts a summary of all buck converter’s output inductors analyzed in Sect. 2.3.3. For each operating point, a large variety of different inductors are available. The best compromise between volume, size, and inductor losses have to be found, depending on the system requirements.

Fig. 2.20
figure 20

Losses of selected inductors with a reasonable price or volume plotted versus f sw at (left) and versus at (right)

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Wittmann, J. (2020). Motivation for High-Vin Converters and Fundamentals. In: Integrated High-Vin Multi-MHz Converters. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25257-1_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25257-1_2

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