Common mistakes in power-supply layouts and how to avoid them

Physical layout is as critical to good power-supply operation as the semiconductor devices and passives that are selected. Poor circuit layout can ruin an otherwise great design. Luckily, most mistakes have been made before and you can learn from them! This presentation focuses on some of the most common layout mistakes in DC/DC and AC/DC power supplies. For each issue,  we will review the likely symptoms, root cause and describe how to optimize the layout to avoid the problem.  For each mistake we will also discuss some related tips and tricks to make you power-supply layouts the best they can be.

Low-noise and low-ripple techniques for a supply without an LDO

Many noise-sensitive systems use low-dropout regulators (LDOs) to provide low-noise and low-ripple power to sensitive analog circuits. But with growing current demands for these rails, designers are struggling to include LDOs because of their size, power loss, thermal rise and cost. In this topic, we will discuss challenges that designers encounter when designing a power supply for a high-speed analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and approaches to solve them.

Advanced power-converter features to reduce EMI

Electromagnetic interference (EMI) is a hot topic in automotive and industrial power electronics due to the addition of new emissions standards and the tendency toward higher-frequency switching regulators. Generally, low-frequency EMI is expensive to filter, and high-frequency EMI is often a mystery to find and difficult to address. Modern EMI features target these issues to significantly reduce the cost and effort needed to pass EMI standards. This presentation examines how to pass EMI at different frequency bands with new features provided by modern, industrial buck converters. 

Isolated gate-driver bias-supply design considerations

Electric and hybrid-electric vehicles are the future of the automotive industry. As a result, the use of automotive inverters and on-board chargers is driving the need to use wide bandgap devices (i.e., SiC, GaN), isolated gate drivers and isolated gate-driver bias supply. Even though the gate-driver bias supply is a small portion of the entire design, it affects the reliability of the gate driver, overall system efficiency and the system electromagnetic interference (EMI). This presentation examines gate-driver bias-supply architecture requirements and solutions that consider reliability, performance, low-EMI and BOM reduction using LLC converters and flyback converters as an example.

Optimizing GaN-based high-voltage, high-power designs

GaN enables power supply designers to raise the switching frequencies of power supplies by an order of magnitude. These higher operating frequencies can reduce the size of those same designs by a factor of two or more. These facts, coupled with high reliability, make GaN an attractive option for high-voltage, high-power designs. This presentation explores how to effectively utilize GaN to get the most out of your design by diving into topics such as topology selection, best operating frequency, layout, thermal management, control, etc.

Supercapacitor and battery backup power-supply design

Low-power, backup-power supplies are used in end equipments such as storage systems, patient monitors, smart meters or automotive emergency call systems where an unexpected power disruption can cause data loss or problems. In this seminar, we introduce low-power backup supplies based on supercapacitors and batteries, explain their advantages and disadvantages, go through charging solutions and design challenges and give examples based on practical designs.