The Emerging Power Management Systems short course was held from May 3 to May26, 2022 virtually through the University of Limerick. The short course consists of eight 2 hour lectures followed by a question and answer session. The course is taught by Aleksandar Prodic from the University of Toronto.

The course was fascinating. The professor described the Small Ripple Approximation (SRA), the Inductor Volt-Second Balance, and Capacitor-Charge Balance methods of analyzing Switch Mode Power Supplies (SMPSs). The professor used the approximation on boost and buck converters to create an equivalent circuits that replaced the switching elements with a transformer with a winding ratio related to the duty cycle of the controller plus some voltage and current sources. Then the model can be simulated in SPICE using AC analysis without complex switching signals to worry about.

Course Program

The course program outline is shown below:

• Lecture 1 - Power Management Systems
  • Topologies, SMPS, linear regulators, converters, SC circuits, design trade-offs, converter modeling.
• Lecture 2 - Controller Design – Analog vs. Digital
  • Analog controller design, motivation & challenges, high-frequency digital controllers.|
• Lecture 3 - High-Frequency Digital Controllers
  • Practical implementation, limit cycling & resolution, design methods, compensator design, on-chip implementation.
• Lecture 4 - High-Performance Controllers
  • Advanced digital & mixed-signal controllers, time-optimal & minimum deviation control, on-line efficiency optimization, load-interactive features.
• Lecture 5 - Emerging Converter Topologies
  • Limitations of conventional solutions, reduced voltage swing principle, multi-level (ML) converter topologies, principles of operation & analysis.
• Lecture 6 - Control of Multi-Level Controllers – Part I
  • Design & control challenges, flying capacitor (FC) voltage control, start-up issues.
• Lecture 7 - Control of Multi-Level Controllers – Part II
  • Practical mixed-signal controllers for ML-FC SMPS, advanced features, design example.
• Lecture 8 - Advanced Power Management Architectures
  • Hybrid architectures, design example, on-chip implementation of PM system for mobile applications.

Text book

One of the text books recommended for the course was the Fundamentals of Power Electronics by R. W. Erickson and D. Maksimovic.

Simulators

We used the Typhoon-HIL Control Center power simulator with the Sandia National Laboratories Xyce SPICE simulator for our homework assignments. The Xyce simulator was selected because it is well suited for simulating switching power converters.

Typhoon-HIL

A license for the Typhoon-HIL power simulator was provided for the course and may be available for free generally. Follow the download link below and request a license. Typhoon-HIL also provides an interface for Xyce SPICE simulator which can be downloaded from GitHub.

• Typhoon-HIL Download
• typhoon-hil/xyce-typhoon-hil-interface

Xyce

The Sandia National Laboratories SPICE simulator Xyce is free and can be downloaded from the Xyce download website after registering.

• Xyce Users on Google Groups

Acknowledgements

I enjoyed this course. I appreciate Professor Prodic for teaching the course, and Hooman Reyhani for his efforts organizing the course.

Certificate of Completion

References

Recommended Reading List

1. R. W. Erickson and D. Maksimovic, Fundamentals of Power Electronics, 3rd edition, ISBN-10: 3030438791, Aug. 2020, or 2nd edition Springer Media Inc., 2001.
2. ISTE - Wiley, Power Systems-On-Chip: Practical Aspects of Design, edited by Bruno Allard, ISBN: 978-1-786-30081-2, 2016.
3. A Prodic, D Maksimovic, RW Erickson, Design and implementation of a digital PWM controller for a high-frequency switching DC-DC power converter, in Proc. IEEE IECON’01, 2001.
4. A Prodic, D Maksimovic, Design of a digital PID regulator based on look-up tables for control of high-frequency DC-DC converters, in Proc IEEE COMPEL 2002.
5. AV Peterchev, SR Sanders, Quantization resolution and limit cycling in digitally controlled PWM converters, IEEE Trans. on Power Electronics, 2003.
6. H Peng, A Prodic, E Alarcón, D Maksimovic, Modeling of quantization effects in digitally controlled dc–dc converters, IEEE Trans. on power electronics, 2007.
7. Z Lukic, N Rahman, A Prodic, Multibit $\Sigma-\Delta$ PWM Digital Controller IC for DC–DC Converters Operating at Switching Frequencies Beyond 10 MHz, IEEE Trans. on Power Electronics 22 (5), 2007.
8. T.A. Meynard, H. Foch, Multi-level conversion: high voltage choppers and voltage-source inverters, Power Electronics Specialists Conference, 1992. PESC '92 Record.
9. T.A Meynard, H. Foch, Multilevel converters and derived topologies for high power conversion, Industrial Electronics, Control, and Instrumentation, 1995., Proceedings of the 1995 IEEE IECON 21st International Conference.
10. T.A. Meynard, H. Foch, P. Thomas, J. Courault, R. Jakob and M. Nahrstaedt, Multicell converters: basic concepts and industry applications, Industrial Electronics, IEEE Trans. on, 2002.
11. P. S. Shenoy, M. Amaro, J. Morroni and D. Freeman, Comparison of a Buck Converter and a Series Capacitor Buck Converter for High-Frequency, High-Conversion-Ratio Voltage Regulators, IEEE Trans. on Power Electronics, 2016.
12. K. Nishijima, K. Harada, T. Nakano, T. Nabeshima and T. Sato, Analysis of Double Step-Down Two-Phase Buck Converter for VRM, in Proc. IEEE International Telecommunications Energy Conference, 2005.
13. SM Ahsanuzzaman, A Prodić, DA Johns, An integrated high-density power management solution for portable applications based on a multioutput switched-capacitor circuit, IEEE Trans. on Power Electronics, 2015.
14. A Stupar, T McRae, N Vukadinović, A Prodić, JA Taylor, Multi-objective optimization of multi-level DC–DC converters using geometric programming, IEEE Trans. on Power Electronics 34, 2019.
15. N Vukadinović, A Prodić, BA Miwa, CB Arnold, MW Baker, Extended wide-load range model for multi-level dc-dc converters and a practical dual-mode digital controller, IEEE APEC 2016.