Sinrace Power Supply Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.

compared with traditional distribution power supply structure (left) in the telecom single-board , integrated switching regulator (right) has higher efficiency and reliability to accelerate the design process, reducing circuit board area.

The advantage of integration switching regulator

Many areas of electronics industry, Including the power electronics industry, The common goal is integrated system components to reduce overall costs, Improve reliability and try to shrink PCB area. In the past twenty years, Power management IC manufacturers carry out a lot of work , integrated many functions in the chip inside , to meet the isolation, the isolation type DC-DC conversion application needs.

Integration of switch power supply integrated MOSFET, Associated Gate Drive and PWM controller for the DC-DC switch in a capsulation this is no longer the new concept .They are very suitable for modern communication veneer of the distributed power required compact, multi-channel load power supply, be able to point to provide excellent dynamic load the transient response.

Design ,develop, test power for communication system board will cost veneer development process too much time, In addition to PCB layout time, In power development one of a major problem is to solve a layout related problems, These problems include: not reasonable power levels layout, Inappropriate grounding, layout  the line of sensitive simulation near the rapid change of current and voltage power cord, Not provide kelvin connection for voltage and current detection, EMI overproof, and decoupling capacitor position is not correct, etc. When power adopt has multi peripheral division elements, These issues may produce a fabric swatch mistakes.

Instead, integrated switching regulator get the power level (MOSFET and grid drive) and electric current detection function integration to internal, eliminated many of the problems related about PCB, and avoid most of fabric swatch mistakes problem. Not only that, the integration of switching regulator pins in the design configuration is also intended to avoid the layout and grounding problem. Components Integrated switching often provide compact structure, through the optimized and the verification of PCB layout, help to shorten the development cycle, speed up the products to appear on the market.

Cause the modern telecommunication system environment requires high performance, small size design, PCB space becomes more nervous. let power levels and PWM controller integrated into the chip can save a space effectively; Integrated switching regulator can work at higher working frequency and allows to use small size input/output capacitance ,inductance and other filter capacitance, compare with divided scheme, save more space of circuit board. Higher working frequency can also design a wider control loop bandwidth, supports fast load and transient response.

Source conversion efficiency is an important index to measure the power performance, this is also a main reason why switch power supply instead the linear regulators. Of course, switch converter make higher noise and EMI. Switching power supply power consumption including: conduction loss (related MOSFET conduction resistance RDS (ON)) and switch loss (related in the MOSFET, broken state conversion between speed). When work at high frequency switching loss is the dominant, because every second repeatedly MOSFET opening or closing the conversion. The conversion time depends on the grid power circuit of the impedance, this circuit control of the MOSFET open and close. For the division of the drive power MOSFET and grid, because it has MOSFET pins inductance and lead inductance, etc, so when parasitic parameters of high frequency gate drive impedance is bigger. Integrated switching regulator through the grid will drive and MOSFET integration in a single package, and to reduce the parasitic components, which provides a faster when in high frequency conversion time and better efficiency.

Thermal management is an important indicator of power supply design in a large system . In load point architecture, Heat generated by the power conversion distribute in each integrated switching regulator, not concentrate in a power module. The higher the efficiency of integrated switching regulators, the less heat generated. In addition, the integrated switching regulator is usually a thermally enhanced package, the exposed pad is soldered directly to the PCB, and transfer heat to the ground plane (ground plane, the heat spread to the entire board, eliminating the need to use a large heat sink) through the thermal vias (diameter 8mil to 12mil) .Finally, thermal shutdown circuit directly control integrated switching power supply, can provide effective protection when overheating ,to prevent it from damaging devices ,thereby enhance the reliability of the system.

Integrated switching regulator provide a variety of packages and a wide input voltage (3V to 12V) range and output current (<1A to 10A) range. Low-power device package are: SOT, MSOP and TSSOP. High-power devices use QFN, BGA and other packages which can dissipate more power.

Integrated switching regulator is an ideal choice of medium-power bus of the modern telecommunications system. Based on the comparison of discrete MOSFET, gate driver and controller of the regulator , integrated solutions can greatly reduce product time-to-market, save space, improve efficiency, simplify the system thermal management, and have the higher reliability.