Digital Control of Switching Power Converters

Part 1
September 15

Part 2
September 16

Hosted by e/j BLOOM associates, Inc.

This Professional Advancement Seminar will provide an introduction to digital control techniques for modern-day switching converter controllers and associated design applications. This design topic is an area of renewed excitement and activity, as is evident from seminars and papers presented at recent power electronics conferences and seminars.  To understand the future impacts and trends, an historical review of analog techniques will first be presented in this segment. The goal of this segment is to convey the essence of digital control methods and how these methods may be leveraged within the context of all analog switching converter controllers.  Of practical interest in this course is how analog and digital techniques may be advantageously combined into controllers addressing low to medium-power switching converter applications.

Computer-based worksheets are provided for the attendees that detail various levels of engineering design and control methods for both analog and analog/digital circuits. Following this part of the course segment, experimental results are then provided, with all hardware configuration details and software files provided. This will give attendees a good start in setting up a development laboratory of his or her own for further experimentation.

Highlights of this seminar’s presentation include:

• A review of analog control as utilized in many practical applications
• Simplifying engineering control-loop design techniques
• Key concepts behind digital control
• Textbook replacement of analog control with digital control
• Tradeoff studies of digital and comparable analog designs.
• Experimental results for validateion and empirical development, plus
• Short videos are shown throughout the presentation showing experimental and simulation details.

Practical engineering solution files are provided and reviewed, including:

• Mathcad™ calculation worksheets, detailing design examples, methods and procedures from the presentation. Copies in Adobe Acrobat™ PDF formats are also included in the CD-ROM for those without access to Mathcad™. Several versions of the files are saved for those that may not have the latest copy.
• Matlab™/Simulink™/Stateflow™/Plecs™ Suite examples – this tool set enables high-level architectural and system level evaluation. It is an analysis platform that easily allows what-if questions to be explored as a pre-curser to hardware implementation.
• Excel™ design files, containing much of the same material as given as in the Mathcad™ course files noted above.

The instructor for this part of the course will be Phil Cooke, well known for his recent contributions to digital control measures for converter designs. Phil received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts in 1987 and a Master of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering from the National Technological University in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1991.

During 1987 to 1995, he worked for the General Electric Company (GE) in Erie Pennsylvania in the Transportation Industry and was a graduate of the Edison Engineering Program at GE in 1991. In his work at GE, he engineered, built and fully tested boost, flyback, buck-boost, buck and isolated push-pull dc-dc converters of many varieties. He was an instructor for classes for GE’s “A Course” students upon his graduation from the Edison Program.

From 1995 to 1999, he was a member of the technical staff of the Unitrode Corp in Merrimack, New Hampshire. In this position, he designed and built non-isolated and isolated power converter topologies and wrote technical papers about these controllers for the company’s seminars and for power electronics conferences. He also defined many analog modulator, controller ICs for peak current mode and voltage mode control for common power stage topologies.

In 2000 he joined Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI) in San Jose, California. At ADI, Phil was an application and development engineer responsible for development and definition of new power management products. In 2003, Phil became a staff engineer with the iWatt Corp, focusing on integrated digital and analog power conversion technologies. He was responsible for research, development and definition of new power management products utilizing both analog and digital mixed signal circuitry. While at iWatt, Phil expanded his analog power background to include cost-effective digital control for 50W to 140W ac-dc power converters.

He is currently with International Rectifier in North Carolina, continuing his work in the development and definition of power management integrated circuits as a power systems architect. Phil is a Senior Member of the IEEE Power Electronics Society.

This seminar on Digital Control of Switching Power Converters was independently developed and is not in any way affiliated with or sponsored by the International Rectifier Corporation.