A Programmable Controller IC for DC/DC Converter and Power Factor Correction Applications

This paper presents the design of a low-cost programmable controller integrated circuit (IC) for general power electronics applications. The architecture of the programmable controller IC consists of 10-bit ADC and DAC, programmable counter array (PCA), which is configured to function as PWM, and a control unit (processor) for regulation. The processor unit is configured as digital compensator, through fewer program steps to perform accurate compensation on the voltage control loop of the converter system. Limit-cycle oscillation is minimized through inclusion of a sufficiently low integral gain term in the control law. A hybrid control method is first used to control the input voltage and current waveforms to achieve a unity power factor correction. It is observed that the programmable converter achieves the high efficiency power conversion. The conversion efficiency of the digital controlled boost converter is 91% with a 0.8% ripple voltage performance. While in power factor correction (PFC) circuit application, the power factor and output ripple voltage of converter are 0.995 and 0.93%, respectively. The chip is implemented with TSMC 0.25 um CMOS process.