Power Electronic Tips

Evaluation kit aims to simplify low-power wireless charging design

Redding Traiger — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 16:39:48 +0000

Eggtronic has unveiled a new evaluation board that allows engineers to quickly develop and prototype ultra-efficient, low-component count wireless power transfer designs for low-power applications. The WaveEgg Low-Power (LP) EVB is built on Eggtronic’s proprietary, high-frequency WaveEgg architecture, which optimizes performance and efficiency and reduces component count and form factor in high-performance power converter and wireless power transmission systems. Ideally suited to wirelessly charging and powering small, smart devices and IoT products, WaveEgg delivers powers between 0.5 W and 30W and can work at extremely high frequencies (from some MHz to tens of MHz, including ISM 6.78 – 13.56 – 27.12 MHz).

WaveEgg offers end-to-end efficiency that is significantly higher than traditional systems while allowing the overall bill of materials (BoM) to be reduced. Using the WaveEgg LP EVB, engineers will be able to create systems with high low-load to full-load efficiency using fewer components than standard class D, class-E, class F, class Phi, and other resonant wireless power transfer solutions – including Qi, – and Airfuel-based technologies.

WaveEgg is based on Eggtronic’s EPIC (Eggtronic Power Integrated Controller) ICs. These ICs integrate a 32-bit RISC-V core and high-performance digital and analog peripherals and feature a flexible internal structure that supports control of both standard and proprietary power conversion architectures. High efficiency over the whole load range is achieved through a proprietary design that achieves zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) and quasi-zero-current-switching (quasi-ZCS) on the transmission side and ZVS+ZCS on the receiving side.

At an output of 6W and a switching frequency of 2 MHz, WaveEgg achieves an efficiency of 85%. The requirement for fewer components than conventional designs further contributes to efficiency by reducing losses from non-ideal component behavior. Additional component count reduction is possible for battery charging applications as the receiver is also capable of charging a battery through a step-down converter implementing a CC/CV mode algorithm, eliminating the need for a battery charger controller.

The post Evaluation kit aims to simplify low-power wireless charging design appeared first on Power Electronic Tips.

240 W eval board targets gains in USB-C power delivery

Redding Traiger — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 17:17:01 +0000

Eggtronic has unveiled an evaluation board (EVB) that allows engineers to speed the development and significantly reduce the size and cost of 240W power delivery (PD) 3.1 applications while supporting ultra-fast charging through industry-leading efficiency.

The SmartEgg 240W PD 3.1 EVB has a peak efficiency above 95% and operates at over 90% efficiency from light load to full load. A single stage that combines zero voltage switching (ZVS) power factor correction (PFC) and quasi-forward isolated regulation significantly reduces the bill of materials (BOM) and size of key components (including storage capacitors and magnetics) compared to traditional PFC+LLC and PFC+Asymmetric Half-Bridge (AHB) architectures. The result is a platform that delivers light-load energy savings of up to 50%, achieves a power density of 21.9W/in³ (1.34W/cm³) to support extremely compact charger designs, and, most importantly, dramatically reduces BOM cost.

Based on Eggtronic’s innovative SmartEgg AC/DC architecture, the new EVB incorporates proprietary mixed-signal, low-power EPIC (Eggtronic Power Integrated Controller) 2.0 IC controllers and features built-in protection against overpower, overvoltage, overtemperature, short circuits, and brownouts. EPIC, which is based on a 32-bit RISC-V core and a rich set of high-performance digital and analog peripherals, incorporates a flexible internal structure that supports multiple independent control loops of both standard and proprietary power conversion architectures.

Supplied as a dual-port module, the SmartEgg 240W PD 3.1 EVB can be quickly modified for any number of charging ports thanks to the flexibility of the EPIC 2.0 controller, which supports many slave buck converters, each acting as a standalone port. Because the master EPIC IC on the secondary side adjusts all the charging cases by distributing the power needed to each port or allocating the full power to a single port via I²C communication, the power-sharing behavior can be customized.

The post 240 W eval board targets gains in USB-C power delivery appeared first on Power Electronic Tips.

APEC 2024: Power to the data center

Martin Rowe — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 01:26:06 +0000

Data centers power the world, or does the world power data centers? According to one report, datacenters currently consume 2% of the world’s electricity and that could increase to 8% by 2030. Much of that electricity arrives at the load as low voltage, high current. For example, a single IC, processor, graphics processor, AI chip, or FPGA needs as much as 2000 A at 0.8 V. APEC 2024, a conference for power-electronics engineers, featured several demonstrations on this phenomenon.

Isn’t electrical power best delivered at high voltage, low current?

Well, yes. For example, the AC power delivered to your neighborhood arrives at thousands of volts. Transformers drop the voltage near the load, which increases the current but over a short distance. That minimizes losses caused by IR drops in the wires. Same for EVs. The batteries can produce hundreds of volts at low current whereupon load voltages are much lower.

The ICs in network equipment are, of course, digital and they can never be fast enough. That’s why logic levels continue to drop. Those 5 V TTL logic levels are too high for today’s high-speed digital devices. The difference between a logic 0 and logic 1 can go below 1 V, often 0.8 V. Why? Because it takes less time to switch between small logic levels.

Such a small difference in logic levels also creates signal-integrity issues. Digital receivers need lots of help distinguishing between logic states and at low voltages and must contend with noise. That brings in signal processing — predistortion and error correction — which also consumes energy.

The following videos highlight demonstrations related to data-center power.

Picotest

In the video below, Steve Sandler explains how Picotest uses a set of ten Analog Devices power modules to convert a 48 V power rail down to 0.8 V at 2000 A. That’s what it takes to power today’s devices. Engineers can use this board to test power rails while the ASIC, emulated by the board, is in development. The board lets engineers control load current from 0 A to 2047 A with 1 A resolution.

STMicroelectronics

Delivering power to a data center encompasses more that just delivering high-current, low voltage power on a board. At APEC 2024 ST’s David Bates demonstrated the company’s offerings.

The ecosystem starts at 48 V, after which regulators bring the voltage down to 12 V. Following that, protection devices keep the main board safe. Each e-fuse can handle up to 60 A or 120 W. The e-fuses are resettable MOSFETs. The final stage drops the voltage to load levels, which can be as low as 0.8 V. That occurs close to the load to minimize IR drops on the board. Bates also explains the concept of phases in DC power delivery.

Texas Instruments

In the Texas Instruments booth, Abhinay Patil demonstrated a power-delivery reference design for servers. The demonstration started with a 12 V power supply. The reference design provides input protection, temperature protection, and short-circuit protection using TPS25990 e-fuses. DC-DC converters drop the voltage to 1.8 V. The board can deliver up to 700 A.

The post APEC 2024: Power to the data center appeared first on Power Electronic Tips.