Search

A digitally controlled low-dropout voltage regulator (LDO) that can perform fast-transient and autotuned voltage is introduced in this paper. Because there are still several arguments regarding the digital implementation on the LDOs, pros and cons of the digital control are first discussed in this paper to illustrate its opportunity in the LDO applications. Following that, the architecture and configuration of the digital scheme are demonstrated. The working principles and design flows of the functional algorithms are also illustrated and then verified by the simulation before the circuit implementation. The proposed LDO was implemented by the 0.18-μm manufacturing process for the performance test. Experimental results show that the LDO's output voltage Vout can accurately perform the dynamic voltage scaling function at various Vout levels (1/2, 5/9, 2/3, and 5/6 of the input voltage VDD) from a wide VDD range (from 1.8 to 0.9 V). The transient time is within 2 μs and the voltage spikes are within 50 mV when a 1-μF output capacitor is used. Test of the autotuning algorithm shows that the proposed LDO is able to work at its optimal performance under various uncertain conditions.

Low-drop-out (LDO) voltage regulators have been widely used in the power supply of the integrated circuits (ICs). With the evolution of the IC manufacturing process and its applications, the design of the analog controlled LDO has encountered more challenges in recent years. This paper starts with the discussion of low supply voltage and low output capacitor problems that have been found in the analog controlled LDO. To solve the mentioned problems, a novel design concept of the digitally controlled LDO is then presented. To verify the feasibility of the real implementation, the designed circuit is validated using the NanoSim/VCS software in a 0.18µm manufacturing process before the circuit is taped-out. With the test condition of 1V supply voltage, the stability of the proposed LDO is guaranteed when a small output capacitor (1µF) with very low equivalent series resistance(1mΩ) is used. Load test result shows that the output voltage spike is only 40mV with 3µs recovery time when the load current steps-up from 1 to 51mA.

A single-stage buck-type AC-DC converter is proposed for medical implants to achieve high efficiency. The proposed structure combines two traditional stages of the three-stage power path for medical implants and eliminates a MOSFET and a filter capacitor to improve the efficiency. The proposed circuit converts 40 Vpp coil voltage into a DC output voltage of 4.2 V. The stability analysis of the circuit is also presented. Load currents between 1 mA to 100 mA are supported. The efficiency of the proposed circuit is 81.9%.