A power management IC for distributed power supplies in low to medium power applications

This paper introduces a novel flexible integrated power management IC that enables implementation of various distributed power supply architectures in low to medium power applications, ranging from a fraction of watt to tens of watts. In these applications distributed power supply solutions have not been traditionally used, due to several practical implementation challenges related to speed, protection, and synchronization between modules. The new IC power module eliminates these problems by combining segmented power stages with high-bandwidth mixed-signal current program mode controller and a novel capacitive coupling and coding scheme. Several identical custom designed IC modules are fabricated in 0.13 μm CMOS process, each providing up to 2 W of output power, while operating at up to 10 MHz switching frequencies. The versatility and proper functionality of the modules are verified in several distributed power supply architectures, through simulation and experimental results.