In the last installment of Circuit VR, we walked around a simplified buck converter. The main simplification was using a constant PWM signal. The result is that the output voltage is a fixed fraction ...

Buck converters, a pivotal class of DC–DC converters, are widely implemented in modern power electronics to achieve efficient voltage step-down conversion. Recent advancements focus on enhancing ...

Another lifetime ago, and as a young engineer, I had to design a power conversion system. The input power came as raw electrical energy from a jet engine during flight. The output power was input to ...

Controlling the brightness of LEDs requires a driver that provides a constant, regulated current. To achieve this goal, the driver topology must be able to generate a large enough output voltage to ...

A ripple-generating circuit is usually needed to ensure stability of constant-on-time (COT) controlled buck converters. Different values of the ripple generating circuit can have direct impacts on ...

Negative buck converters are increasingly used to “step down” (by absolute value) negative voltages. The main reason behind the increasing demand is the standardization of switching transformers, ...

As electronics become more advanced, the need for efficient power management increases. One crucial element of power management is the DC-DC converter, which is a device that converts DC voltage from ...

For the PDF version of this article, click here. When designing converters, it is often desirable to measure the dc current coming into the converter. This is particularly true when batteries are ...

Designing a circuit is a lot easier on paper, where components have well-defined values, or lacking that, at least well-defined tolerances. Unfortunately, even keeping percentage tolerances in mind ...