Switching regulator

From OpenCircuits
Revision as of 22:51, 5 February 2010 by DavidCary (talk | contribs) (more SMPS design links)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

A "voltage regulator" is designed to hold a constant output voltage.

A "switching voltage regulator", usually called a switching regulator, also called a DC to DC converter, accomplishes this goal by rapidly switching a transistor from full on and full off.

A "linear voltage regulator", usually called a "linear regulator", accomplishes the same goal by holding a transistor in its active region, somewhere between full on or full off.

The 723 Voltage Regulator can be used as either a linear or a switching regulator.

The Linuxstamp uses a the LTC3407-3 switching regulator.

The ARMUS Embedded Linux Board uses ...

The MCP1252/3 Flyback Switching Regulators can generate an output voltage greater than the input voltage -- something impossible with linear voltage regulators.

While learning about SMPS, teachers typically try to gradually ease you into understanding them by starting with perhaps the easiest-to-understand switching converter, the buck converter. Then they move on to the other "simple" converters than can be built using 1 inductor, 1 switch, 1 diode, and 1 capacitor (and some stuff that turns the switch on and off "appropriately"): the buck converter, the boost converter, and the inverting converter. Then they throw every equation even remotely related to SMPS at you, making them sound far more complicated than they really are.

In practice, it seems that many switchers are "flyback" converters -- although some people say that Cuk converters are better than flyback converters; some even go so far as to say that Cuk converters are the "optimum topology".


further reading