The authors discuss high-voltage power conversion. Conventional series connection and three-level voltage source inverter techniques are reviewed and compared. A novel versatile multilevel commutation cell is introduced: it is shown that this topology is safer and more simple to control, and delivers purer output waveforms. The authors show how this technique can be applied to either choppers or voltage-source inverters and generalized to any number of switches.<<ETX>>

Multi-level conversion : high voltage choppers and voltage-source inverters

A latch-type voltage sense amplifier in 90nm CMOS is designed with a separated input and cross-coupled stage. This separation enables fast operation over a wide common-mode and supply voltage range. With a 1-sigma offset of 8mV, the circuit consumes 92fJ/decision with a 1.2V supply. It has an input equivalent noise of 1.5mV and requires 18ps setup-plus-hold time

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A Double-Tail Latch-Type Voltage Sense Amplifier with 18ps Setup+Hold Time

An experimental technique is described for observing the effects of switching transients in digital MOS circuits that perturb analog circuits integrated on the same die by means of coupling through the substrate Various approaches to reducing substrate crosstalk (the use of physical separation of analog and digital circuits, guard rings, and a low-inductance substrate bias) are evaluated experimentally for a CMOS technology with a substrate comprising an epitaxial layer grown on a heavily doped bulk wafer Observations indicate that reducing the inductance in the substrate bias is the most effective Device simulations are used to show how crosstalk propagates via the heavily doped bulk and to predict the nature of substrate crosstalk in CMOS technologies integrated in uniform, lightly doped bulk substrates, showing that in such cases the substrate noise is highly dependent on layout geometry A method of including substrate effects in SPICE simulations for circuits fabricated on epitaxial, heavily doped substrates is developed >

Experimental Results and Modeling Techniques for Substrate Noise in Mixed-Signal Integrated Circuits

A quantitative yield analysis of a latch-type voltage sense amplifier with a high-impedance differential input stage is presented. It investigates the impact of supply voltage, input DC level, transistor sizing, and temperature on the input offset voltage. The input DC level turns out to be most significant. Also, an analytical expression for the sensing delay is derived which shows low sensitivity on the input DC bias voltage. A figure of merit indicates that an input dc level of 0.7 V/sub DD/ is optimal regarding speed and yield. Experimental results in 130-nm CMOS technology confirm that the yield can be significantly improved by lowering the input DC voltage to about 70% of the supply voltage. Thereby, the offset standard deviation decreases from 19 to 8.5 mV without affecting the delay.

Yield and speed optimization of a latch-type voltage sense amplifier

The need for ultra low-power, area efficient, and high speed analog-to-digital converters is pushing toward the use of dynamic regenerative comparators to maximize speed and power efficiency. In this paper, an analysis on the delay of the dynamic comparators will be presented and analytical expressions are derived. From the analytical expressions, designers can obtain an intuition about the main contributors to the comparator delay and fully explore the tradeoffs in dynamic comparator design. Based on the presented analysis, a new dynamic comparator is proposed, where the circuit of a conventional double-tail comparator is modified for low-power and fast operation even in small supply voltages. Without complicating the design and by adding few transistors, the positive feedback during the regeneration is strengthened, which results in remarkably reduced delay time. Post-layout simulation results in a 0.18- μm CMOS technology confirm the analysis results. It is shown that in the proposed dynamic comparator both the power consumption and delay time are significantly reduced. The maximum clock frequency of the proposed comparator can be increased to 2.5 and 1.1 GHz at supply voltages of 1.2 and 0.6 V, while consuming 1.4 mW and 153 μW, respectively. The standard deviation of the input-referred offset is 7.8 mV at 1.2 V supply.

/pdf/analysis-and-design-of-a-low-voltage-low-power-double-tail-wi7aqv7w29.pdf

Analysis and Design of a Low-Voltage Low-Power Double-Tail Comparator

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 [1–6]. 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 [1–3]. 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.

12.4 A 10mW fully integrated 2-to-13V-input buck-boost SC converter with 81.5% peak efficiency

Due to their superior fast-switching performance, GaN transistors show enormous potential to enable compact power electronics in applications like renewable energy, electrical cars and home appliances by shrinking down the size of passives. However, fast switching poses challenges for the gate driver. Since GaN transistors have a low threshold voltage V t of ∼1V, an unintended driver turn-on can occur in case of a unipolar gate control as shown for a typical half-bridge in Fig. 24.2.1 (top left). This is due to coupling via the gate-drain capacitance (Miller coupling), when the low-side driver turns on, causing a peak current into the gate. This is usually tackled by applying a negative gate voltage to enhance the safety margin towards Vt, resulting in a bipolar gate-driving scheme. In many power-electronics applications GaN transistors operate in reverse conduction, carrying the inductor current during the dead time t, when the high-side and low-side switch are off (as illustrated at a high-side switch in Fig. 24.2.1, bottom left). As there is no real body diode as in silicon devices, the GaN transistor turns on in reverse operation with a voltage drop V F across the drain-source terminals (quasi-body diode behavior). As a negative gate voltage adds to V F , 63% higher reverse-conduction losses were measured for a typical GaN switch in bipolar gate-drive operation. This drawback is addressed by a three-level gate voltage (positive, 0V, negative), which at the same time provides robustness against unintended turn-on similar to the bipolar gate driver, proven in [1] for a discrete driver.

A fully integrated three-level 11.6nC gate driver supporting GaN gate injection transistors

A highly integrated synchronous buck converter with a predictive dead time control for input voltages ${ > } 18\,\text{V}$ with 10 MHz switching frequency is presented. A high resolution dead time of ${\sim} 125\,\text{ps}$ allows to reduce dead time dependent losses without requiring body diode conduction to evaluate the dead time. High resolution is achieved by frequency compensated sampling of the switching node and by an 8 bit differential delay chain. Dead time parameters are derived in a comprehensive study of dead time depended losses. This way, the efficiency of fast switching DCDC converters can be optimized by eliminating the body diode forward conduction losses, minimizing reverse recovery losses and by achieving zero voltage switching. High-speed circuit blocks for fast switching operation are presented including level shifter, gate driver, PWM generator. The converter has been implemented in a 180 nm high-voltage BiCMOS technology. The power losses were measured to be reduced by up to 31% by the proposed dead time control, which results in a 5.3% efficiency increase at ${V_{\rm IN} = } 18\,\text{V}$ , ${V_{\rm OUT} = } 5\,\text{V}$ , and 0.45 A load. At ${V_{\rm IN} = }12\,\text{V}$ , the peak efficiency is 81.2% with an efficiency improvement of 6% with dead time control.

An 18 V Input 10 MHz Buck Converter With 125 ps Mixed-Signal Dead Time Control

A wide-bandwidth galvanically isolated current sensing circuit with an integrated Rogowski coil in 180 nm CMOS is presented. Exploiting the high-frequency properties of an optimized on-chip Rogowski coil, currents can be measured up to a bandwidth of 75 MHz. The analog sensor front-end comprises a two-stage integrator, which allows a chopper frequency below signal bandwidth, resulting in 2.2mVrms output noise. An additional integrated Hall sensor extends the measurement range towards DC.

Bernhard Wicht

Papers

Yield and speed optimization of a latch-type voltage sense amplifier

12.4 A 10mW fully integrated 2-to-13V-input buck-boost SC converter with 81.5% peak efficiency

A fully integrated three-level 11.6nC gate driver supporting GaN gate injection transistors

An 18 V Input 10 MHz Buck Converter With 125 ps Mixed-Signal Dead Time Control

A fully integrated DC to 75 MHz current sensing circuit with on-chip Rogowski coil