Chapter 5. Linear Power Supplies: Top-Down Approach (Power IC Design)

This slide book introduces the demands of emerging high-performance power-supply ICs and discusses up-to-date circuit-design techniques aimed at addressing them, especially within the context of portable microelectronics. The presentation reflects the top–down design systems-to-circuits approach that industry adopts when developing power-supply systems. Within this framework, concepts evolve organically from the ground up with an educational mindset, rigorously surveying, analyzing, and evaluating basic theory and the state of the art. In this way, the material presents, explains, and shows how to understand, develop, and use semiconductor devices to model, analyze, and design ICs that supply and sustain microelectronic loads. Some of the topics covered include power consumption, frequency response, feedback control, and power-supply rejection.

The ultimate objective of the book is to cultivate and develop insight and intuition for how circuits draw, condition, and deliver power. In other words, the material seeks to provide a physical and intuitive view of devices and circuits that transcends mathematical and algebraic formulations to empower engineers with the tools necessary to design practical and high-performance power-supply ICs.