Clik here to view.
More components, more problems
Whenever I watch TV, listen to the radio, or even just look at billboards on the street, I’ll see an advertisement promoting how reliable a product is compared to its competitor. Everyone from car...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Predicting output-capacitor ripple in a CCM boost PFC circuit
The output capacitor is the main energy storage element in a boost power factor correction (PFC) circuit (Figure 1); it is also one of the larger and more expensive components. Many factors govern its...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Quantifying the value of wide VIN
When designing a power supply, one of the challenges designers often face is dealing with voltage transients. It is important to protect circuitry from voltage spikes greater than the rated input...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Designing an IoT modular light
LED lighting applications have revolutionized the world – not only in general lighting but in anything that uses illumination, like LED displays, portable illumination systems, medical instruments and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Shrink your industrial footprint with new 60V FemtoFETs
In Shenzhen, China, recently I met with a designer for an infotainment systems manufacturer. “Do you happen to use any 60V load switches in your design?” I asked. He affirmed, telling me he...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Advantages of wide band gap materials in power electronics – part 2
In the first installment of this series, I explored how gallium nitride (GaN) enables operation at higher frequencies and how that allows for smaller component selection. This ultimately shrinks...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Power Tips: Shock and Awesome (The PMLK)
A long time ago, in a galaxy seemingly far, far away from my home town, I began my journey as a college student studying electrical engineering in the small city of Gainesville, Florida. Late nights of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A smaller step-down power module for communications equipment systems
The proliferation of cellular phones, tablets and other Internet-connected devices (the Internet of Things) has drastically increased the amount of wireless communications traffic throughout the world....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Designing an IoT modular light – part 2
In the first installment of this two-part series, I talked about an illuminating idea I had for a project I could use in my newborn baby’s room: an Internet of Things (IoT) modular light. I’ve done the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
FemtoFET MOSFETs: small as sand but it’s all about that pitch
What contains more silicon: a grain of sand or TI’s latest FemtoFET product? As I sit in my beach chair watching the waves of the Atlantic roll onto the Jersey shore, my mind drifts over this...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Powering the Altera Arria 10 GX
Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are increasingly complex system on chips (SoCs) that include not just programmable logic gates and random access memory (RAM) but also analog-to-digital...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Enabling 48V-to-POL single-stage conversion with GaN
Enterprise server, switch, base station and storage hardware designers are always looking to increase power density and efficiency on their motherboards. With the addition of more components on the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Scope plot surgery – my boost converter has an off-ramp!
As an applications engineer, I often get inquiries about voltage and current flows in switching regulators. And I often realize that the basic theory I learned in college doesn’t always tell the whole...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Powering Intel’s Xeon D SoC in servers, storage and switches
Intel’s Xeon D chip, developed under the Broadwell-DE code name, is the first Xeon central processing unit (CPU) to bear the system-on-chip (SoC) title by including two physical chips in one package....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Can an LDO produce better-quality images in small-sized camera applications?
Digital imaging electronics are becoming more portable and integrated into high-quality solutions. The cohesiveness of high-performance and small-sizes in camera applications is often influenced by the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
USB Power Delivery 2.0 vs 3.0
When I first heard about the movie “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” I was confused because they are both the “good guys.” Since USB has released a limited distribution of a new USB Power Delivery...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why is the cloud isolated?
In this day and age of bits and bytes, the demand for information transfer and retrieval is ubiquitous. Whether in line at the grocery store or waiting for a train, we use our smartphones to check our...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Decrease power consumption with an LDO
A low-dropout regulator (LDO) can function as a DC linear voltage regulator at an output voltage very close to the supply voltage, which is an important factor in decreasing power dissipation across...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Power Tips: Multiply your output voltage
Voltage multipliers provide a simple method to create high-voltage outputs at low currents. They are useful in applications such as printers, sensors and charged-particle systems that require anywhere...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How you measure your ripple can make you or break you
Testing switching power supplies includes many different tests, one of them being the output-voltage peak-to-peak ripple. Output-voltage ripple is the alternating current (AC) component of the direct...
View Article