Design and Analysis of Single-Inductor Power Converter for Both Battery Balancing and Voltage Regulation.

In this article, a highly efficient battery-balancing circuit with output voltage regulation for mobile applications is proposed and analyzed. The proposed circuit performs a cell-balancing operation for series-connected multiple-battery cells and voltage regulation operation simultaneously without additional power conversion stages. Therefore, it can be integrated into a battery pack with maximized power density and efficiency. These features are essential for recent low-power applications with multiple batteries, such as wireless/smart speakers, drones, and electronic point-of-sale, that require high power density. The operational principle, electrical modeling, and tradeoff relationship between the system power losses and balancing characteristics are derived, and the optimal design candidates of the proposed topology are discussed in terms of Pareto optimization. The effectiveness of the proposed system is verified with a prototype board using GaN switches, and 96.05% efficiency is achieved with a 1.8 V, 0.5 A load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]