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Constant frequency hysteretic PWM controlled buck converter

Conference Paper · December 2009

DOI: 10.1109/PEDS.2009.5385833 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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 PEDS2009

Constant Frequency Hysteretic PWM Controlled Buck Converter

Kiichiro TANIGUCHI,
Terukazu SATO, Takashi NABESHIMA, and Kimihiro NISHIJIMA
Faculty of Engineering
Oita University
700, Dannoharu,
Oita, 870-1192 Japan
E-mail: v08e2020@mail.cc.oita-u.ac.jp

Abstract -- This paper presents a constant frequency

hysteretic PWM controlled buck converter. In order to have II. CONTROL CIRCUIT AND OPERATION
good transient responses for input voltage and load current
changes, a new PWM control method with inherent derivative A. Conventional Circuit And Operation
characteristics is proposed. The proposed PWM controller
consists of a comparator, a simple RC network and operational Fig.1 shows the buck converter with the conventional
amplifier, and it can be synchronized with an external clock hysteretic PWM controller [5] and Fig.2 shows operating
signal. Since the converter operates at a constant frequency, it is waveforms of hysteretic comparator. The control circuit
easy not only to design an output filter but also to apply to consists of a comparator with hysteresis. The operating
multi-phase converters. The theoretical and experimental waveforms of the comparator are shown in Fig.2. Upper and
verification of the proposed method are presented and excellent
steady state, dynamic performances, and transient
lower threshold voltage VH and VL are determined by
characteristics are realized. reference voltage Vr, comparator high level output voltage
VOL, Resisters Ra and Rb, as follows expression (1)(2).
Index Terms-- constant frequency; hysteretic PWM Ra Rb (1)
V = v + V
controller; hysteretic comparator; buck converter; H
Ra + Rb
r
Ra + Rb
OH

synchronization; hysteretic window; frequency characteristics; Ra Rb

transient responses; load regulation
I. INTRODUCTION
With the development of integrated circuit technology,
switching power supplies have been widely used in many
applications because of smaller size, lighter weight and
higher efficiency. Among various kinds of electronic
equipment, the power supplies for digital IC’s, such as
microprocessors, must have a good dynamic performance for
input voltage and the large load current change with high
slew rate [1]-[3]. For the digital IC’s that have a current
rating of under 15A, a hysteretic PWM controlled buck
converter is widely used such as a POL converter since it has
the advantage of fast transient response for large load
transient [4],[5] and the capability of higher switching
frequency. However, for higher current rating than 15A, it is
necessary to employ multi-phase converter, and it is
necessary to adopt a new control method synchronized with a
clock signal.
This paper presents a constant frequency hysteretic PWM
controlled buck converter synchronized with a clock signal
by using simple method. The operation of the control circuit
is described and the steady state and dynamic characteristics
of the proposed converter are analyzed. The steady state and
dynamic characteristics and frequency characteristics are
examined and confirmed by experiments.
VL = vr + VOL (2)
Ra + Rb Ra + Rb
The triangular voltage obtained by integrating the filter
inductor voltage is superimposed on the output voltage, and
fed to the negative input of the comparator as a feedback
voltage vn. During the output voltage of the comparator is
high level, the switch S1 is on state, S2 is off state and vn
rises almost linearly. In the mean time, the voltage of the
comparator is inverted, the switch S1 turns off and S2 turns
on. During the comparator output is low level, vn fall down
almost linearly. In the mean time, the voltage of the
comparator positive input is vl. When vn reaches the vn, the
comparator, the switches S1 and S2 are inverted. In this way,
switching cycle is determined. Further detailed the
descriptions are performed in the previous article [5].
B. Proposed Circuit And Operation
Fig. 3 shows a presented hysteretic PWM controlled buck
converter and an error amplifier. The error amplifier is used
to provide the voltage to the comparator as a reference and is
not needed to have high gain over the switching frequency.
The most peculiar part of the controller is hysteretic
comparator part. The triangular voltage vn is obtained from
simple RC network connected between the comparator output
and the ground. The voltage of positive input of the
comparator vp is obtained from output voltage of error
amplifier and output voltage of the comparator. The
switching frequency of presented controller is basically
determined by the time constant TC and the hysteretic

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 PEDS2009

window voltage when a clock signal is not applied. is automatically fixed so as the output voltage becomes
nearly Vr. The transfer function of PWM controller is
S1 L rL io expressed by the following expression.
ΔV1 ( s ) 1 + sT (3)
iL =
rC ΔV A ( s ) VOH
Vi S2 Vo RL
During the comparator output voltage vl is high level, the
C
integrated voltage vn of the negative comparator input rises
vG up until it reaches vH. vl is then changed to low level and vn
R1 C1
begins to descend. If the clock signal is applied to the positive
comparator input before vn reaches vL, the comparator output
vn is forced to high level.
v1
U As dynamic performance of the PWM controller is mainly
determined by the time constant TC= R1C1, it is necessary to
vp
make a value of TC large in order to obtain good transient
performance for external disturbances. However the large
U : Comparator Ra Rb Vr time constant TC at the high switching frequency results small
amplitude of triangular voltage vn and it may easily lead
Fig. 1. Circuit diagram of the buck converter controlled by conventional
undesirable irregular switching due to the incoming switching
hysteretic PWM controller noise. To solve this problem with small time constant, this
vl means with large amplitude of triangular voltage, the output
error voltage is amplified and then fed to inverse input of the
V OH comparator. In this case, the gain of error amplifier over the
switching frequency is not needed to be high. Because the
frequency component of the output transient voltage is much
0 lower than that of the switching noise. Therefore the
vp
operational amplifier employed to the error amplifier is not
necessary to have high GBW.
VH
VL III. ANALYSIS OF THE CONTROL CIRCUIT
0 In the previous study [5], the transfer functions of the
vn hysteretic PWM controller a ramp signal as a perturbation of
the input signal. Fig. 4 shows key waveforms of hysteretic
VH comparator.
VL
io
0
Fig. 2. Operating waveforms of hysteretic comparator DC − DC Converter RL

Fig. 3 shows key waveforms of hysteretic comparator.

Upper and lower threshold voltage VH and VL are determined
by the output voltage of error amplifier vA, comparator high R1 C1

level output voltage VOH, low level output voltage VOL, and Ri
resisters Ra Rb as follows expression (1)(2). vn Cf Rf
v1
Ra Rb (1) U1
V = H v + A V OH
Ra + Rb Ra + Rb vp
Ra Rb (2)
VL = vA + VOL U2
Ra + Rb Ra + Rb U1 : Comparator vA
Ra Rb
Vr
The output voltage of the comparator positive input is VH U 2 : OP.amp
when synchronizing with the fixed frequency that set by Clock
outside clock signal of the small duty. In this way, switching
cycle is determined. On the other hand, when the clock signal Fig. 3. Circuit diagram of buck converter controlled by proposed hysteretic
is applied to the positive comparator input, its output is PWM controller
forced to high level even before vn reaches VL. Then vn rises
up until it reaches VH. Hence the clock signal determines the
timing of the turn on of the main switch S1 and the duty ratio

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 PEDS2009

signal is introduced here.

Initially we consider a steady state term of the duty ratio D
Clock for the step change of the reference voltage ΔVr. The steady
state output voltage changes with same value since the DC
gain of the comparator can be considered infinity for the
vp averaged input voltage. The steady state value of the variation
VH of the duty ratio ΔDo is then
vn ΔV r Tc (4)
ΔD 0 ≈
VL
Vi
Next, a transient term of the duty ratio is examined by the
following procedures. When the small step change of the
PWM reference voltage occurs at the beginning of the on state of
OUTPUT the main switch S1 as shown in Fig. 5, only the duration of
on state changes shown by the dotted line in one switching
TON TOFF TON TOFF cycle. The transient term of the duty ratio ΔDt shown in Fig.
6 is approximated by
ΔVr Tc
Fig. 4 Key waveforms of hysteretic converter ΔDt ≈ (5)
VOH T

Assuming that the switching period T is sufficiently small

T1 ' T2 ' compared to the time constant, we have
u (t ) − u (t − T )
≈ δ (t ) (6)
Δvr T
vr + Vh ΔVr Tc ΔV (7)
ΔD ≈ δ (t ) + r
VOH Vi

Applying the Laplace transform to (7),

1 V T
vr ΔD( s) = (1 + i c (1 − e − sT ))ΔV r ( s) (8)
Vi VOH T
T1 T2 The transfer function between the output voltage and the
duty ratio is also obtained by considering the feedback
network. In the closed loop operation, the voltage vn is fed to
the inverse terminal of the comparator and the transfer
Fig. 5 Waveforms of comparator input voltage
function of (8) can be then applied by changing its polarity.
The transfer function of the output voltage to duty ratio
Control voltage has a DC component as indicated by (6) and therefore it
behaves like an integral compensation. This is the reason why
the steady state and the dynamic performances in the low
Δvr frequency region are improved using the proposed controller.
In the steady state, the following equations are derived.
0 t For the conventional controller,
Vo = Vr − rL I o (9)
Duty ratio Where rL is the equivalent series resistance of the inductor.
For the proposed controller,
Vo = V r (10)
ΔD From (9) and (10), it is obvious that the proposed
controller has no the steady state error while the conventional
0 t controller has that induced by the equivalent series resistance
T of the inductor and the output current.
Fig. 6 Variations of reference voltage and duty ratio
A new approach employing a step function as the input

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 PEDS2009

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS TABLE I

THE VALUE OF EACH ELEMENT
A 5V to 1.2V-10A buck converter with synchronous
rectifier is implemented to examine the performance of symbol value
proposed PWM controller. Table.1 shows the parameters
used in these experiments. Vi 5V
Vo 1.2V
A. Frequency Characteristics
L 0.36μH
The frequency characteristics of presented PWM
controller in free run for three time constants are shown in C 400μF
Fig. 7. This PWM controller has derivative characteristics R1 6.2kΩ
above the corner frequency determined by time constant TC. C1 3300pF
And, the frequency characteristics of presented PWM
Ra 100kΩ
controller in synchronized for three time constants are shown
in Fig. 8. Presented PWM controller has derivative Rb 1kΩ
characteristics above the corner frequency determined by Rf 12kΩ
time constant TC. In this experiment, time constant T is 12μs Cf 560pF
and corner frequency is 13kHz.The calculated results well
Rs 6.2kΩ
agree with the experimental ones.
The frequency characteristics of a operational amplifier S1 RJK0305
are shown in Fig. 9. In this figure, excellent frequency S2 RJK0301
characteristics are achieved. FET-Driver ISL6207
B. Transient Responses Comparator MAX961
Fig. 10 shows the transient output voltage for the step load Op-Amp HA17904
change from 0A to 10A with a current slew rate of 10A/ μs.
The top response shows the case without synchronization and
second one is that with synchronization. Both responses are
almost identical. 40
Tc=12.9u
C. Load Characteristics 30 Tc=27.1u
Fig. 11 shows the load characteristics of output voltage Tc=52.8u
Gain[dB]

20
and the line characteristics of output voltage. As seen form
figure, no steady-state error was observed on the output 10

voltage. It is shown that the proposed controller has the 0

excellent load regulation.
-10
100 1000 10000 100000
Frequency[Hz]

90
Tc=12.9u
Tc=27.1u
Phase[degree]

Tc=52.8u

45

0
100 1000 10000 100000
Frequency[Hz]

Fig. 7 Frequency characteristic of a PWM control in free run.

(TC =12.9μs,27.1μs,52.8μs, C1=3300pF)

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 PEDS2009

40

Tc=12.9u
30
Tc=27.1u
V:50mV/div.
Tc=52.8u H:20μs/div.
Gain[dB]

20
20A/div.
10
1.2V Tc=27μs
Vo
0
50mV Without synchronization
-10
100 1000 10000 100000
Frequency[Hz]

90 1.2V Tc=27μs
Vo
Tc=12.9u
Tc=27.1u 50mV synchronization
Phase[degree]

Tc=52.8u

45 10A

Io
0
100 1000 10000 100000
0A
Frequency[Hz]

Fig. 8 Frequency characteristic of a PWM control in synchronized.

(TC =12.9μs,27.1μs,52.8μs, C1=3300pF) Fig. 10 Transient responses of the output voltage

20 1.4
1.35
Output voltage Vo[V]

10 1.3
Gain[dB]

1.25
0 1.2
1.15
-10 1.1
1.05
-20 1
100 1000 10000 100000 1000000 10000000 0 2 4 6 8 10
Frequency[Hz] Load current Io[A]

90 1.4
45 1.35
Output voltage Vo[V]
Phase[degree]

0 1.3
-45 1.25
-90 1.2
-135 1.15
1.1
-180
1.05
-225
1
-270 3 4 5 6 7
100 1000 10000 100000 1000000 10000000
Frequency[Hz] Input voltage Vi[V]

Fig. 11 Steady state characteristics

Fig. 9 Frequency characteristic of ΔVA (s)/ ΔVr (s)

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 PEDS2009

V. CONCLUSION
A new robust PWM control method with inherent
derivative characteristics at constant switching frequency is
proposed and analyzed. As a result, it was verified that the
converter controlled by the proposed PWM method provides
excellent transient performances and the stable switching
action. The use of small time constant with large gain
improve settling time and remove the irregular switching
action under the same control bandwidth.

REFERENCES
[1] R. Redl, and N. O. Socal ‘’Near-Optimum Dynamic Regulation of DC-
DC Converters Using Feed-Forward of Output Current and Input
Voltage with Current-Mde Control,’’ IEEE Trans. On Power
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[2] M. T. Zang, M. M Jovanovic and F. C. Lee,’’Analysis and Evaluation
of Interleaving Techniques in Forward Converters,’’IEEE Trans. On
Power Electronics, Vol.13, No.14, 1998, pp. 690-698.
[3] W. Huang, ’’A New Control for Multi-Phase Buck Converter with Fast
Transient Response,’’ Proc. Of Applied Power Electronics Conference,
2001, pp.273-279.
[4] R. Miftakhutdnov, ‘’Analysis and Optimization of Synchronous Buck
Converter at High Slew-Rate Load Current Transients,’’Proc. Of
Power Electronics Specialalists Conference, 2000, pp. 714-720.
[5] T. Nabeshima T. Sato, S. Yoshida, S. Chiba and K. Onda, ‘’Analysis
and Design Considerations of a buck Converter with a hysteretic PWM
controller,’’in Proceedings of Power Electronics Specialists
Conference, pp. 1711-1716.

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