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A high-voltage replica based current sensor is presented, along with challenges and design techniques which are rarely discussed in literature so far. The performance is evaluated by detailed small signal and large signal analysis. By dedicated placing of high-voltage cascode devices, while keeping as many low-voltage devices as possible, a high gain-bandwidth product is achieved. A decoupling and biasing circuit is introduced which improves the response time of the current sensor at on/off transitions by a factor of five. The current sensor is implemented in a 180nm HV BiCMOS technology. The sensor achieves a DC loop gain of 83 dB and a gain-bandwidth product of 7 MHz. With the proposed techniques, the gain-bandwidth product is increased by a factor of six. The measurable current range is between 60mA and 1.5 A. The performance is demonstrated in a 500 kHz buck converter at an input voltage of 40V. The overall circuit concept is suitable for 100V and beyond, enabling high performance power management designs including switched mode power supplies and motor applications.
The power supply is one of the major challenges for applications like internet of things IoTs and smart home. The maintenance issue of batteries and the limited power level of energy harvesting is addressed by the integrated micro power supply presented in this paper. Connected to the 120/230 Vrms mains, which is one of the most reliable energy sources and anywhere indoor available, it provides a 3.3V DC output voltage. The micro power supply consists of a fully integrated ACDC and DCDC converter with one external low voltage SMD buffer capacitor. The micro power supply is fabricated in a low cost 0.35 μm 700 V CMOS technology and covers a die size of 7.7 mm². The use of only one external low voltage SMD capacitor, results in an extremely compact form factor. The ACDC is a direct coupled, full wave rectifier with a subsequent bipolar shunt regulator, which provides an output voltage around 17 V. The DCDC stage is a fully integrated 4:1 SC DCDC converter with an input voltage as high as 17 V and a peak efficiency of 45 %. The power supply achieves an overall output power of 3 mW, resulting in a power density of 390 μW/mm². This exceeds prior art by a factor of 11.
In recent years, significant progress has been made on switched-capacitor DC-DC converters as they enable fully integrated on-chip power management. New converter topologies overcame the fixed input-to-output voltage limitation and achieved high efficiency at high power densities. SC converters are attractive to not only mobile handheld devices with small input and output voltages, but also for power conversion in IoE, industrial and automotive applications, etc. Such applications need to be capable of handling widely varying input voltages of more than 10V, which requires a large amount of conversion ratios. The goal is to achieve a fine granularity with the least number of flying capacitors. In [1] an SC converter was introduced that achieves these goals at low input voltage VIN ≤ 2.5V. [2] shows good efficiency up to VIN = 8V while its conversion ratio is restricted to ≤1/2 with a limited, non-equidistant number of conversion steps. A particular challenge arises with increasing input voltage as several loss mechanisms like parasitic bottom-plate losses and gate-charge losses of high-voltage transistors become of significant influence. High input voltages require supporting circuits like level shifters, auxiliary supply rails etc., which allocate additional area and add losses [2-5]. The combination of both increasing voltage and conversion ratios (VCR) lowers the efficiency and the achievable output power of SC converters. [3] and [5] use external capacitors to enable higher output power, especially for higher VIN. However, this is contradictory to the goal of a fully integrated power supply.