Communication on Power Lines Using Frequency and Duty-Cycle Modulation in digitally Controlled dc-dc Converters

This paper investigates power line communication in digitally-controlled dc-dc converters in distributed architectures that share the same bus voltage. Communication between different dc-dc converters is obtained by means of switching frequency and duty-cycle modulation detecting the switching signal on the common supply bus voltage. The proposed solution is simple and it takes the full advantages of integrated digital control, enabling intelligent power management and communication. Even if aimed to an integrated digital controller, experimental investigation has been performed using discrete components, implementing the communication architecture in FPGAs. Simulation and experimental results in a dc-dc buck converter confirm the proposed analysis and the performance achievable by the proposed power line communication techniques.