Article from Micrel Anew, more compact approach to elit By Roel van Ettinger Senior Staff IC Design Engineer, Micrel fing voltage ripple in portable devices ‘www micrel.com ‘Output voltage ripple plagues various types of portable electronics product. Voltage ripple is an unwanted artifact generated by switching regulators, the DC-DC converters which supply power to board-tevel devices. A typical DC-DC converter in a well designed circuit will generate a ripple voltage of around 1% of its nominal output, so a regulator producing a 2.5V output can be expected to generate around 25mV of output ripple. For some end products, this amount of ripple has no noticeable effect. But for others, it causes a marked degradation in performance. In GPS navigation systems, for instance, it slows down signal acquisition and reduces the precision of the device's location data. In cameras and other devices equipped with image sensors, it can cause a loss of image clarity. In mobile phones, it reduces the signal-to-noise ratio and can thus lead to dropped calls, impaired audio quality and reduced data download rates. Engineers designing such small, portable end products have therefore looked for ways to stop ripple voltages from affecting sensitive circuits. There was a time when an ordinary LDO (low drop-out linear voltage regulator) was the portable device designer's most obvious and effective ‘means for eliminating output ripple from a DC-DC converter. At converter switching frequencies ofa few tens of kilohertz, the LDO does a good job of blocking output ripple and delivering a clean output voltage. In portable devices, however, miniaturization is always on the marketer's wish-list: as a consequence, portable systems now commonly use DC-DC step-down converters switching at frequencies of 300kHz and higher. These use smaller capacitors and inductors than their lower- frequency counterparts, and thus offer important space savings. But at these higher frequencies, the ripple attenuation capability of the LDO weakens dramatically. Designers of noise-sensitive systems have therefore been forced to use a different way to eliminate voltage ripple. ‘The favored method today is the LC filter, which can be made effective at the higher frequencies used by small buck regulators. The problem with these is that the frequency at which the filter becomes effective has to set low (typically up to 5OkHz) in order to achieve sufficient attenuation at the switching frequency; this results in large values for the capacitor and inductor.ver Tn | ‘tomvioiv Teaco A "Hii iif NN) FFT Lee -20€8/01¥ Tracep [tts mnt 204800 ‘toysiDiv Fig. 1: typical output from the MIC23153 switching regulator from Micrel Figure 1 shows the output from a MIC23155 synchronous buck switching regulator in a typical application circuit, measured across an output capacitor. The buck regulator steps down a 5V input to 2.5V. The regulator's switching action creates the output ripple that appears on the output capacitor. The magnitude of the output ripple depends on the inductor ripple current, the output capacitance value and its equivalent series resistance (ESR), Trace A in Figure 1 shows a 25mV peak-to-peak ripple, and Trace B shows a spectral plot of the same signal. The fundamental frequency of 314kHz is the switching frequency of the buck regulator; the harmonics are multiples of the switching frequency. ANLLC filler deals effectively enough with this scale of voltage ripple: a simple LC output fiter can generally be expected to reduce this noise by a factor of ten (20dB), and sometimes by as much as a factor of 100 (40dB). High-frequency spikes, which are clearly shown in Figure 1, are attenuated even more. Unfortunately, the space required for an effective double-pole LC fiter ofthis type is considerable because of the size ofthe inductor and capacitor. When the common requirement for a semiconductor switch (to cut off power to the circuit when not needed, a power-saving tactic) is also taken into consideration, itis clear that the designer of a noise-sensitive circuit appears to be faced with an unappealing trade-off between either a clean power supply or a compact circuit design Since LC filters can also present problems of ringing and EMI, especially if lower-cost, lower- quality inductors and capacitors are specified, itis clear that designers will be ready for a new, less problematic solution to the problem of voltage ripple. This is the dilemma that Micrel has addressed with a new, patented noise attenuation technology: Ripple Blocker™ Compact size, enhanced performance Ripple Blocker enables active filtering to be implemented in compact silicon integrated circuits, producing superior noise attenuation in a smaller board area than an equivalent LC filter. Its operation can be illustrated through a description of a Ripple Blocker ‘voltage follower’ device, the MIC94300 (see Figure 2).wwice4300 Fig. 2: functional block diagram of MIC94300 integrated load switch ‘The output of this device follows the input, but with a small fixed 170mV drop. This voltage drop is sufficient to ensure that the integrated power NMOS FET at the output can operate in its saturation region for high performance while maintaining high efficiency. LDO regulators more commonly use an internal PMOS FET: the use of an NMOS FET is unusual, as circuitry required to drive them is more complex, An NMOS FET, however, has the advantage of inherently better power supply ripple rejection (PSRR) across the targeted frequency range — and ripple rejection is the primary function of the MIC94300 device, PMOS FETs, by contrast, lose ripple rejection capability at frequencies above 10kHz. Micrel has developed a patent-pending architecture for controlling the NMOS FET's gate very efficiently, so that power losses here are unusually low. ‘The Ripple Blockers fixed voltage drop of 170mV is independent of load current — the drop is set by an internal 170mV voltage referenced to the input voltage. A low-pass filter passes the DC and blocks the AC component of the input voltage. The filtered signal is provided as a reference to the LDO so the output will follow the DC of the input but reject any AC signal This technology has enabled the creation in the MIC94300 of a device offering both a low drop- ‘ut and high attenuation of voltage ripple across a wide frequency range. The attenuation performance can be seen in Figure 3: this is the output from the MIC23183, now filtered through the MIC94300 noise attenuator. (The application circuit is shown in Figure 4.) Vous tomvioiv Trace A ret] -20aB/Div Trace B Hiimeneiina bemoan ‘1OpsiDiv Fig. 3: output from MIC23153 switching regulator after passing through a MIC94300 Ripple Blocker load switch. The output is measured over capacitor C1 shown in Figure 4,Fig. 4: typical step-down converter circuit, using the MIC23153 from Micrel to step @ SV input down to a 2.5V output. Noise attenuation is provided by the MIC94300. The MIC94300's attenuation factor is around 1,000 (60dB) from 30kHz to 10MHz (see Figure 5). This is a 10-100 times improvement over the LC fiter across the frequency range. These characteristics are ideal for noise-sensitive circuits using today's buck switching regulators, which typically operate at fundamental frequencies of SOOkHz-3MHz. PSRR Cour = 1F es oe | iev-sinvep Frequency (H2) Fig. 5: PSRR performance of the MIC94300 noise attenuating load switch Noise attenuation performance, then, is superior to the conventional LC fiter: at the same time, the MIC94300 offers a dramatic savings in board space (see Figure 6). The MIC94300, the dimensions of which are just 0.88mm x 0,88mm (in its chip-scale package version), integrates the fiter circuitry and a load switch in a single device. Externally, it only requires a small output and input capacitor (each of 1pF). When compared to an LC filter and discrete load switch, a Ripple Blocker device can reduce the board space requirement by as much as 65%.Traditional Solution >65% Shrink | =X ae | Blocker™ i ge Fig. 6: an MIC94300 load switch with Ripple Blocker technology provides superior attenuation in a much smaller area Ripple Blocker technology is implemented in a variety of devices, all of which, like the MIC94300, offer outstanding noise attenuation performance. A Ripple Blocker LDO, the MIC94310, offers a choice of 18 fixed output voltages ranging from 1.2V to 3.3V. Both the MIC94300 and MIC94310 are rated for loads up to 200mA. Versions rated for 500mA loads are also available. Clean power supply, no complications Noise-sensitive designs in which board space is limited are the prime candidates to use Micrel's Ripple Blocker technology. Where noise sensitivity is at its most extreme, the extra 20-40dB of noise attenuation provided by Ripple Blocker devices compared to an LC filter is also a powerful benefit. For many designers, however, a highly integrated noise-attenuation device with documented performance offers the advantages of ease of use and convenience, Implementing a clean power, supply with a Ripple Blocker device eliminates the need to design an LC fiter, and also eliminates the complications involved in using an LC filter, such as the risk of ringing and EMI. A Ripple Blocker device, by contrast, is simple to design in, delivers guaranteed noise attenuation across a known frequency range and generates no unwanted EMI or other effects, This can not only improve system performance, but also reduces design time, complexity and risk. For systems using today's generation of high-frequency switching power regulators, in fact, there is no simpler or more compact way to produce a clean power supply. [ENDS] [1,400 words}