Central Gateways

The specifications of the feedback (FB) voltage resistor divider in DC-DC converters often poses various design challenges, such as determining the required resistance or adjusting parameters (e.g. output voltage, upper divider resistance or lower divider resistance). Figure 1 shows the various magnitude combinations for the FB upper and lower divider resistances. This article examines the ...

by Ruediger Richter, Director of Test Engineering at Monolithic Power Systems. It is extremely important for IC manufacturers to be able to design and test automotive parts at precisely set device temperatures. As automotive manufacturers produce vehicles with an increasing number of features, the expectation of reliability and performance increases as well. Reliability trickles down to compon...

There are a wide array of features in a smart car’s cockpit that can enhance driving experience. For example, full LCD central control screens and high-definition displays have made user experience smoother and simpler. With the addition of voice recognition, drivers can make calls and use intelligent navigation. High-quality sound and ambient lighting provide an immersive experience while listeni...

Autonomous driving is one of the most popular trends in the automotive industry. Currently, commercial-level automatic driving remains at the L2/L3 level. Automotive radar technology is gaining momentum as a solution to achieve higher levels of automated driving. With the accurate perception of millimeter-wave radar, cars can autonomously make intelligent judgements and decisions. At 77GHz, mil...

A car’s infotainment system is an on-board, integrated information processing system based on the car’s bus body and internet. Vehicles have become more integrated and modular as consumers continue to raise expectations for driving, car information resources, entertainment, and safety. This trend has introduced new challenges to the research and development of car infotainment systems, particularl...

Advances in automotive technology have dramatically increased the number of sophisticated electronic circuits required to improve driving experience and safety in a typical automotive system. New vehicles provide infotainment systems with high-resolution displays, an enhanced user interface, and numerous connectivity options. Improved safety features include LiDAR for collision avoidance, as well ...

Engineers often disagree on whether the inductive bottom of DC/DC power supplies should be laid with copper. The first argument is that laying copper under the inductor produces eddy currents on the ground plane. As a result, the eddy current affects the power inductor’s inductance and increases the system loss, and the ground plane noise impacts other high-speed signals. The second argument is th...

As electronic vehicles become more commonplace, electronic control units (ECUs) are becoming the standard, embedded control system for automotive electronics. ECU systems provide safety and functionality — applications using ECUs include anti-lock brakes, four-wheel drive, electronic automatic transmission, active suspension, and airbags. Gradually, the use of ECUs has extended to vehicle body saf...

The four modern trends of the automotive industry are electrification, intelligence, networking, and sharing. Among these development trends, intelligence requires advanced on-board sensors, controllers, and actuators. Highly intelligent systems tend to have more sensors. As such, the number and variety of cameras/sensors installed on cars increase daily. These include the cameras installed on th...

Designing the compensation network for buck regulators can be tedious and may require several iterations to optimize the solution. Having an optimized control loop, which can enable fast transient response while maintaining proper stability, has become a major challenge with the emergence of new applications such as ADAS and fast transient response requirements. To address these issues, buck regul...

Automakers must design vehicles to thrive in a broad spectrum of environments, from snowy tundras to scorching deserts. Unlike most consumer applications, where the expected lifespan can be months, automotive electronics are often expected to last 15 years or more. When specifying a vehicle component, it is common for OEMs and their suppliers to develop an automotive mission profile, which is esse...

The switch node of a switching regulator or power converter circuit is a critical conduction path that requires special attention when designing the PCB layout. This circuit node is where one or more power semiconductor switches (such as a MOSFET or diode) connect to a magnetic energy-storing device (such as an inductor or transformer winding). The switching signals of this circuit node contain fa...

An unstable power supply can cause severe system issues, such as audible noise from the passive components, unexpected jittering in the switching frequency, extreme oscillations on the output voltage during load transient events, and failures in the semiconductor switches. While there are various reasons for instability, an un-tuned compensation network accounts for majority of instability issues ...

The high power density requirement and board-level space constraints in modern applications — such as lighting, ADAS, and USB — call for higher integration in buck regulators. There is a trend to integrate MOSFETs and compensation networks inside the chip. This integration of the compensation network’s passive components saves cost, board space, and design iterations. However, it...