What digital power supply
There is no clear and unified definition of what digital power supply is in the industry, and different companies have different interpretations of it.
I have defined digital power supply from a functional perspective: digital power supply is a power product for digital control, which can provide management and monitoring functions and extend to control the entire circuit.
PechiLou, Market Development Director of DC/DC converter supplier PowerOne, believes that in addition to DpM, digital power should also include the Digital Power Conversion (DpC) aspect. "The analog pWM feedback loop used in traditional non isolated pOL converters has been replaced by the digital pWM (DpWM) in DpC, allowing for pure digital control of pOL converters." Lou pointed out that "although it is feasible to use a large number of external components for digital management of analog converters, it is not economical; using a digital converter not only simplifies the task, but also enables a large number of functional operations."
STMicroelectronics (ST) explains from the perspective of system framework, "The concept of DpM is to control multiple power conversion modules and external components through a digital kernel and embedded communication interface (usually I2C)."
Feizhao Semiconductor emphasized the difference between DpM and traditional analog power management solutions: DpM provides adaptive control that can adapt to constantly changing needs in the same application. DpM uses analog front-end detection and executes a set of equations to provide output control based on each cycle. In addition, DpM does not require additional external components, while traditional solutions require fine-tuning with external components
The view of power module manufacturer Astec (a subsidiary of Emerson) on DpM is that it is managed in a housekeeping style within the power system and pWM control loop. Therefore, the framework of DpM mainly consists of one or more MCUs, some read and write memory, communication interfaces, and various push-pull power amplifiers and sensors.
In fact, as a digital power supply, firstly, the signal output of pWM is provided by the digital control chip; Secondly, the feedback calculation of the control loop is completed by the digital unit; The third feature is a human-computer interaction interface, which facilitates information exchange and enables controllable power output and input monitoring; Fourthly, there is a communication bus interface that facilitates the implementation of group monitoring and control, redundant control, etc.
