A fully integrated buck converter with a novel digital soft-start circuit. Issue 2 (2nd April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zhang, Zhang; Song, Mingxin; Wang, Xing; Cheng, Zhengxi; Xie, Guangjun
• Is Part Of: Australian journal of electrical & electronics engineering. Volume 13:Issue 2(2016)
• Page Start: 91
• Page End: 95
• Publication Date: 2016-04-02
• Subjects: On-chip capacitor -- overshoot voltage -- inrush current -- soft-start circuit -- voltage regulator; Electrical engineering -- Periodicals; Electronics -- Periodicals; Periodicals; 621.305
• DOI: 10.1080/1448837X.2015.1092998
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1448-837X

Abstract

Abstract: A novel digital soft-start circuit in the fully integrated buck converter is presented in this paper. The soft-start approach based on a linearly ramped-up reference is proposed to prevent massive in-rush current and overshoot voltage during the start-up phase of the buck converter. Compared with conventional soft-start circuit, the novel circuit is realized by a compact on-chip circuit that requires no external pins and is very simple as well. A fully integrated DC–DC buck converter with proposed circuit has been based on a 0.18 μm mixed signal CMOS process. The results show that this novel soft-start enables the output voltage of the converter to be linearly ramped up to the steady state.