Portable electronic products in the past mainly uses disposable batteries or alkaline batteries as a power supply is different now, whether laptop, mobile phone or MP3/MP4 player, have all the basic use of lithium ion, nickel-cadmium or nickel-hydrogen rechargeable batteries, not only reduces the use of Cost is conducive to environmental protection, and more importantly, a larger battery capacity can be done in order to obtain longer battery life. Rechargeable batteries because of their characteristics to the system developers have also made new demands, in order to make rechargeable batteries have a longer life, the correct charging circuit design and device selection is essential, whether it is an external charger, or system Internal rechargeable power management program is required depending on the use of careful consideration.
Single-chip charge management programs or will become a mainstream
In portable products, battery charging can usually be two ways, one is to use the system itself host MCU plus a pulse-width modulation and demodulation unit (PWM) to achieve, and the other is to use highly integrated single-chip charge management IC . “Single-chip charge management IC’s greatest strength is to have a higher reliability, while the MCU + PWM program is even more cheap and cheerful.” Fujitsu Microelectronics Marketing Manager Wang Yun In an interview with reporter an interview, he explained, “System Manufacturing providers can in terms of cost, reliability and so comparing the two options is better, you can choose the most suitable program. In the long run, with the single-chip charge management IC for cost reduction and external communications functions, as well as the increase, more the application of choice among the more reliable single-chip would become a trend. ”
According to Wang Yun introduced Fujitsu’s charge management products are mainly targeted at the 2Cell above market, and 2 ~ 4Cell applications have to be among the biggest market in notebook computers. From 15 years ago, Fujitsu power management R & D team and Fujitsu notebook R & D departments, began developing the charge management for laptops IC. Through several generations of continuous development and improvement of products, new research and development of the lithium battery charge management ICMB39A132 and MB39A134 in Taiwan and mainland China makers are applied in many other places, but also by the recent high-profile Internet access to this market’s attention. “In the notebook computer applications which, due to a few years ago rechargeable battery explosions happened one after another so that all notebook manufacturers charging part of the design of the design of increasingly importance in the management of part of the charge would prefer to use a high quality, stability and reliability of the big brand power management IC. “he said.
However, BCD Semiconductor Corporation from AC / DC Products Dr. Wu Xin, director of MCU + PWM is more optimistic about the program, he considered that the formation of special charge management IC circuit control scheme is simple, but relatively simple function, usually only on the specific parameters of the lithium-ion battery conduct charge, and different models of portable products are often using a different model specifications of lithium-ion batteries, if we adopt special chip, it will result in duplication of development efforts and waste of resources.
“Using MCU + PWM to achieve Buck circuit and control method of low-cost flexible and can easily be improved and upgraded, can be applied to a variety of lithium-ion batteries.” Xin Wu said.
BCD Semiconductor is an analog signal integrated circuits in the Greater China manufacturers (IDM), engaged in power management IC product design R & D and manufacturing. Unlike the rest of the market Fabless design firms, BCD Semiconductor has a 6-inch wafer fabs (including Bipolar, CMOS, BiCMOS, and BCDMOS production process), can take advantage of product design and integration of advanced technology to optimize product performance and cost in order to provide a cost-effective application solutions.
In fact BCD Semiconductor’s focus is on low-cost, high efficiency AC / DC off-line power adapter / charger controller chip, the company in 2006 developed the first generation of primary-side controller AP370x series is the first launch of its kind on the market one of the products. According to reports, AP370x using the original edge control and output cable compensation proprietary technology, built-in temperature compensation and transformer primary side inductance compensation, you can save optocoupler and secondary case of feedback control circuit to achieve high-accuracy output voltage and current control , thereby greatly reducing the number of power circuit components and simplify circuit design has been successfully used in mobile phones, wireless public telephone, cordless phones and wireless routers and other products charger / adapter. “In order to further improve the power conversion efficiency, reduce standby power consumption, we have further introduced the industry-leading five-star standards to meet the second generation of the primary side controller AP376x series, its no-load power consumption less than 30mW can easily meet the energy of the Star EPSv2.0 and five-star standard mobile phone charger all of the world, including the charger / adapter, and no-load energy efficiency standards. “Xin Wu said.
Increasingly diverse input power
With the increasing diversity of people’s living environment can be used for battery charging power supplies are becoming increasingly diverse, in addition to other traditional 220VAC adapter, users can also hopes to keep power through the USB interface or a vehicle for various devices such as battery charging, In addition, there are user requirements in the device while charging can continue to use its features, so the device need to be more flexible charge management circuitry to accommodate a wider range of application environments.
Clearly, the new requirements to the system manufacturers greater challenge. “The challenge comes from the first charge-management IC require a wider operating voltage range, thus requiring the use of higher voltage semiconductor process to carry out the chip design.” Wang Yun said, “The second challenge is to ask the IC can be on different input power to make corresponding adjustments, as well as battery charging and system power consumption can make a certain amount of management. “Fujitsu MB39A132/134 his charge management IC for example, explains, through the distribution of the dynamic input current to ensure that the system power consumption and battery charging can simultaneously hold.
As the AC adapter / USB / Car power supply provided by the voltage and current are not the same, while charging the battery voltage and sessions are not quite the same, when the charging voltage is higher than the supply voltage can be carried out through step-up charge, so that rise and fall Pressure charge management IC on the market have not seen. In addition, the equipment working at the same time charge, demand charge management IC have a good anti-jamming design, keeping in mind that in the case of low battery voltage, charge current to ensure that is greater than the discharge current, to avoid “make ends meet,” to happen. “From the charging IC design point of view, the current challenges include: 1, how to further improve the conversion efficiency and lower standby charging power; 2, how to effectively manage multi-channel power supply and load; 3, how to improve the charging rate at the same time to ensure the safety of battery life; 4, how to further expand charging control method of flexible configuration in order to adapt to different types of battery charging requirements. “Xin Wu added.
He believes that portable devices such as cell phone chargers charger is a relatively mature and stable market, domestic producers are mostly relevant to manufacturing-based, technology development, the power is relatively weak. And the charger itself is commodity nowadays, and manufacturers relatively great pressure on cost control, acceptance of new technologies is also relatively low. In recent years, because the public awareness of environmental protection, government and various environmental organizations, agencies, including the cell phone makers themselves, have raised a number of environmental standards related to energy-saving charger, for example, the letter issued by the Ministry of the Chinese workers, “mobile phones and recharge converters and interface technology requirements and test methods “(YD/T1591-2006), Energy Star EPS2.0, mobile phone charger grading standards, etc., are all aimed at reducing the waste of resources, improve energy efficiency and reduce empty weight. The introduction of these standards to a large extent driven charger products, technological innovations.
“Chinese manufacturers face major difficulties is the designer’s technical practice, the charge was not able to fully grasp the design requirements of charge.” Wang Yun said, “At the same Gejia charge management IC features different users of the new lack of understanding of product design was not approachable. The solution mainly depend on charge-management IC manufacturers to increase the market of products and technologies, to provide multi-faceted designer technical support to enable designers to quickly grasp the design of Charge Management technology. ”
In a notebook designs, engineers on the charge management IC designs attach great importance, otherwise the event of problems will cost a lot of time and energy engineers, so early detection of problems in research and development is critical. Wang Yun said, Fujitsu addition to the evaluation board for the client systems evaluations, has also developed a laptop power supply design evaluation system, through the system, as long as the customer to provide a complete circuit can be of any problems that may occur prior to a complete inspection, thereby helping to reduce development risk.
Last year, the global financial tsunami occurred in the second half of consumer electronics products for a huge blow, “but we are delighted to find that consumer electronics has been ahead of the overall economy started to recover. In particular, benefited from state subsidies for household appliances to the countryside policies, notebook computers and LCD TVs the rapid warming and other markets. “Wang Yun said. “Next year we will continue to increase in the power management IC R & D investment, will be offered for the whole new generation of charge management products. In recent years the continuous development of new energy technologies, high-profile battery technology, lithium batteries / lithium iron batteries will also be will be applied to more product offerings. from the power management IC point of view, more secure, high-precision, multi-protection function, the external communication functions, cell balancing function and multiple sets of charging and discharging the battery voltage input and so on will be a wide battery management technology development trend of the future. ”
Integrated programmable logic devices using high-power management
Energy-saving design of the most serious challenge is to use the microprocessor to manage the power supply. Microprocessors are not optimized for power management, they must deal with too many instructions, and the reaction time is slow, and may lead to thermal breakdown, as well as sudden and even catastrophic circuit boards and system failures. Although the use of microprocessor power management has been the traditional approach, but using logic, power management devices faster and more reliable.
Lattice Semiconductor in April 2009 launched PowerManagerII series of new products, POWR1220AT8 for power monitoring, repair and voltage measurements provide an excellent solution for programmable devices that can replace the reset generator, control IC, watchdog timer device, sequencing / tracking and hot-plug integrated circuits and many other IC, to provide users with the necessary tools and functionality to meet the large-scale base stations, high-end servers and small single-board computer systems such as the green standard of energy-saving requirements. Depending on the design, energy-saving effect of different, but the energy-saving 30% are not uncommon.
To reduce power consumption and energy conservation is an important way to turn off the circuit board for the unused portion, and the load is low, reducing the power consumed by IC. PowerManagerII highly integrated programmable voltage monitor IC devices to integrate into a device which can help reduce system cost and improve reliability. For example, PowerManagerII1220AT8 monitoring of up to 12 circuit board power supplies, providing up to 20 open-drain (open-drain) outputs and 8 digital outputs DC-DCtrim/margin. The use of on-chip 48 macrocell CPLD and four programmable timer, the device generates a CPU reset signal, including pulse tailing and power failures interrupted. 20 There are four outputs can be configured for high-voltage MOSFET drivers. There are six general-purpose digital inputs can be used for other control functions.
An advantage of this design is that they can use in any power-sensitive as the standard platform power management solutions. Across platforms and product lines to establish such a standard solution obtained by the efficiency of obvious, from the design time and the required quantity of devices can be realized. For low power consumption and demand for energy-saving devices in the past few years greatly increased, and this trend will continue, it is expected that an integrated, programmable power management devices will be more widely used.
Lattice plans to the next generation of power management devices to improve integration and includes more features, not only can support power management, but also enables the management of the circuit board itself. Its function will be expanded to include temperature monitoring, fan control, NV error log, the user logic and system interfaces. In addition to power management products, the company also offers a range of low-power programmable logic devices, including ispMACH4000KZE ultra-low-power CPLD and LatticeECP3FPGA series, which is only about the cost and power consumption of other FPGA with SERDES features half.
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