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Project

Smart Hybrid DC-DC converters for Li-ion Battery Operated Portable Electronics

The goal of this dissertation is to develop power management integrated circuits (PMICs) for Li-ion battery-operated portable electronics that are lightweight, affordable, and efficient. On the one hand, a limited energy source, such as a small battery, mandates efficient use of energy to extend battery life. Emerging applications like internet-of-things (IoTs), on the other hand, push for incredibly smaller footprints. The traditional method of power conversion is no longer workable due to these conflicting constraints. Unfortunately, battery technology hasn’t been able to offer much help in this area. Even technology scaling, which has otherwise revolutionized other domains of IC design, has benefited the PMIC design very little. Therefore, designers’ only remaining choice is to innovate power converter circuits to take advantage of technological advancements and satisfy the requirement for efficiency and power density. Switched-capacitor (SC) converters can effectively take advantage of technology scaling, favoring
compact solutions ideal for portable applications. However, inevitable loss from the charge redistribution results in poorer efficiency. The inclusion of one or more inductors has the potential to eliminate the charge-sharing loss in an SC converter. This strategy has been explored extensively in hybrid converters. Hybrid converters are power converters, that combine capacitors and inductors in a hybrid fashion. Thanks to an additional degree of freedom, these converters offer a wide range of opportunities to improve efficiency and power density. This thesis aims to examine hybrid DC-DC converter options for various well-known Li-ion battery power applications. The power-system-inpackage (PSiP) approach, in which passives are incorporated off-chip, is another focus of this effort. In order to improve active and passive utilization, active and passive devices are optimized separately. Two well-known CMOS-based DC-DCconverter IC prototypes were implemented, and then evaluated to confirm their functionality and recommended operating principles.

Date:19 Jun 2018 →  20 Oct 2023
Keywords:Radiation hard electronics, High Voltage, DC-DC converters
Disciplines:Applied mathematics in specific fields, Modelling, Multimedia processing
Project type:PhD project