Laplace transform — Based theoretical foundations and experimental validation — Low frequency supercapacitor circulation technique for efficiency improvements in linear regulators

Supercapacitor circulation techniques can be used to improve the end-to-end efficiency of linear regulators based on commercial low drop-out regulators (LDO). In this approach a single or multiple supercapacitors are used in series and parallel to the input of a LDO IC and circulated at a very low frequency, to increase the end-to-end efficiency by a multiplication factor compared with the efficiency of the linear regulator circuit. The paper presents the essential theory of the supercapacitor circulation, together with MATLAB simulation results compared with experimental results of a 12V to 5V implementation.