International audienceSystem-on-chip requirements for energy management push both technology and design of voltage regulators to their limits. Integration constraints are added to high performance needs in terms of power efficiency and dynamic performance of the power converters. Switch-mode power supplies (SMPSs) are intended to supplant linear voltage regulators. This paper details a methodology to deal with different tradeoffs introduced by various specifications and constraints of embedded SMPSs. The design methodology is applied to the standard analog step-down SMPS architecture operating at very high switching frequency, and verified experimentally. The results are measured on test chips fabricated in standard 0.25-$mu$m BiCMOS technology, operating between 10 and 200 MHz, respectively, with a power efficiency up to 80% and a small-signal bandwidth of 1.2 and 15 MHz, respectively
International audienceThis paper presents the application of the state space approach to analyze stability and robustness of multiloop linear low dropout (LDO) regulators. Because of the increasing complexity of the LDO architecture, the stability study consisting of an open-loop ac analysis is more and more difficult to apply. In this paper, we demonstrate how a state matrix decomposition of a system allows the stability analysis in closed loop to be performed where the open- loop ac analysis failed. Based on this technique, a methodology of design, a time response criterion, and a Monte Carlo analysis are proposed. The efficiency of this approach is illustrated comparing the classical open-loop ac study with the state matrix decomposition analysis of a complex innovative architecture LDO. The results are verified experimentally
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