The topic we would cover today is our new CIP Hybrid Power Starter Kit.

This starter kit is introducing the PIC16F176X and 7X families of freely

programmable pwm microcontrollers. These microcontrollers

have specific peripherals that are running independently from the core and

are highly configurable so that it can configure them or interconnect them in

specific ways to form some PWM controller architectures. So the

advantage of this freely configurable peripherals are that you can tailor the

PWM controller capabilities specifically to your very application. To allow

designers to utilize these capabilities we also have introduced a new design

tool chain, which is encapsulated in our development environment MPLAB X. So this

is part of our Microchip Code Configurator tool called MCC, and is a

set of sub libraries that allows you to simplify the configuration of multiple

peripherals at the same time. We have set up this assembly in this demo here where

we have a starter kit on the left and here on the right on the screen you see

this MPLAB X environment with the specific switch mode power supply library

subset for Microchips Code Configurator. So this tool now can be used to set up

PWM controllers that support different control modes like peak current load

control, voltage mode control, average motor control. You can combine

multiple control loops, you can add in specific fault handlers and the device

itself then supports you with setting specific thresholds like shutdown levels

for maximum currents, voltage clamping, inputs under voltage

over voltage lockout and further features by utilizing the internal DACs.

So the variety of things you can do with these peripherals is really really wide.

So the switching power supply library helps you to abstract the

capabilities and tailor them to specific topologies. So therefore we also offer

different sets of pre-configurations for targeting specific topologies. So once

you have used that tool to set up a PWM controller for a specific application

and topology, that where you're generating the code, the code is

downloaded into the device, the codes that's generated with the device also

includes functional aspects like soft start, so that you're having a nice

behavior right from the beginning, so that when you fire up the power supply

for the very first time that you can be sure that it won't burn. So once you have

downloaded it, and this is what we are doing in this demo set, is then we have

connected a network analyzer to the output, we are injecting an error signal

and we're using our BODI 100 Network Analyzer to measure the total open-loop

gain in the closed-loop system. So depending on the additional tools you

might have used to design your power supply and to set up your compensation networks,

so to achieve a certain stability of your application, you can then

just measure directly from the kit the final results compared with your

simulation and then you take it from there and in further some iteration

steps you might have quickly achieved your goal.

so before we go into the details about this kit and its software and design

tool chain might be necessary to explain a little bit what hybrid power actually

means the work hybrid is often used in different contexts like hybrid power

supplies is something entirely different from hybrid power controllers so hybrid

in our context means that it's a device which is somewhere between the analog

control domain and the full digital control domain so analog controllers

usually come as fixed Asics covering very specific topologies or specific

applications so the conventional pol controllers for example or you have here

switch switching regulator for flight controllers or resonant converters and

for every single one of them so for every single application you might have

a set of specific Asics to choose from while full digital control then

digitizes even the feedback loop so everything is running and software the

interface is an A to D converter so analog signals continuous time domain

analog signals are converted into digital signals and then processed

through software and then some PWM is adjusted so this the letter 1 full

digital control gives you extreme flexibility in terms of what a

controller can do while analog circuitry is might have a significantly higher

performance but they are nailed to what they have been designed for so that

section between both worlds that is what we're trying to cover with hybrid

controls so it means we have a small device with relatively low power

consumption but and in within the architecture we're combining digital

logic with analog circuits so that we can leverage that in the advantages of

both worlds in one single device so and when we are focusing on these hybrid

devices then it's always a a device which is targeting the

application would have a specific requirement for very specific features

so the basic concept of these products is that in one chip you get a

microcontroller core and a PWM controller peripheral that PWM

controller peripheral always breaks down into three main major blocks consisting

of the compensator so Erin play fire basically and the modulator so the

modulator then determines which control loop control mode you're applying and

there's always an additional fault level that helps you to make sure that the

power supply stays within its safe operating range default is usually tied

into the modulator or uses inputs to the modulator to shut down the passerby in

case something is going wrong so when we're looking into the modulator so here

on the right side we see a specific setup for a voltage or an average

current mode and on the top we see an implementation for a classical picker

remote controller so here on the upper writes in the current note section we

find a subset of codes lay or labeled with PRG so that stands for programmable

RAM generator so we are utilizing this ramp generator to generate a negative

ramp which is modulated onto the reference input to our modulator that

then is used usually in Picard mode for slope computation but it can also be

used in voltage mode this is when you look below you also see a voltage range

on the upper right where we use a positive ramp to generate an analog PWM

signal the next therefore we find in this modulator are fast comparators so

in the current mode section on the top we find that comparative

between the RAM generator and our so-called Co G which is actually our PWM

output logic block so that comparator is used to tie in the current feedback so

that we can trip on peaks of the inductor current while in voltage and

average card mode that comes very same comparator is now used to compare the

reference from the Aaron profile to the artificially generated ramp and when the

ramp exceeds the reference voltage level then it changes its output strips and

and it's our latch and this then influences our PWM output so in both

motivators we always use a PWM module and the so called CEO cheese or the

complimentary output generator or in other devices it's called

a complimentary waveform generator cwg but these blocks to is actually said

they give to get to the capability to start out from a single PWM signal and

split it up into complementary waveforms allowing you to adjust that x or you can

split it up up to a full bridge drive so it also offers additional inputs for

false signals so fault triggers that come from different peripherals or from

external circuits can also be fed into the PWM logic and some additional glue

logics and also would allow you to establish something like conditional

fault handing so the third level is the compensator the compensator on these

devices usually just a are just consisting of an errand to fire so this

is actually a general-purpose operational amplifier then you get a

deck to adjust reference and then the reference itself which is called the

fixed voltage reference F we are

so in addition to help you to condition signals for especially false signals of

to define fault levels to trip on there is a an additional set of comparators

and attack with a lower resolution so usually you get five bit tags that help

you to set up thresholds that five bits might not be sufficient for in some

cases so when you need a higher resolution then it is possible to use

external resistors to create a window which is then still scalable with five

bit and then you send it around a threshold range you would like to set up

so once we have picked these three blocks we now can use these to set up an

entire analog feedback loop here we see the first architecture so on the right

we have a power supply so in this case it's just for the purposes of a sake of

an example it's a boost converter that offers a voltage feedback coming from a

voltage divider and we have a peak current signal which is taken from below

the boost mains which using a shunt resistor so the voltage feedback now is

fed into the outer loop portion of our architecture which is then our air

amplifier so the amplifier compares that signal to our reference which is

internally set by attack the output of that amplifier is fed into the

programmable Ram generator and this part we are modulating a negative frame onto

this reference voltage to apply a slope compensation for our inner p-card load

control loop then we are entering then or we are taking this output of this

program of a ramp generator feed it into a comparator that comparator compares

that reference signal to the peak current signal that's coming from our

shunt resistor and then that output of that comparator trips our

PWM output logic and effectively true hates the duty cycle so to set up the

switching frequency we are now using a digital PWM oniel which allows us to set

up a fixed period with a maximum duty cycle so in case the comparator does not

trip the pwm module in time it's the only time base of the pwm module which

makes sure that the duty cycle is not hitting hundred percent and maybe with a

bad outcome when your inductor saturates and then your power supplies effectively

going out of control

so one thing we see here in this particular example is because of these

devices are highly configurable and can practically drive any kind of topology

it is very hard to define our C Network values that might be necessary to set up

an appropriate computation for every single different topology out there so

therefore all of the compensation networks need to be external with these

devices so we see here in the lower around the OPA so the operational

amplifier that the input as well as it's the output is connected to a device pin

so these device pins are usually sitting right next to each other so that it's

very easy that it can place your RC components of the conversation that are

very close to the device so after having established this basic feedback loop we

are now adding the fault level so the fault level consists of a comparator

with five attack in this case we are using it as an additional over current

shut down and then we can feed that output of the comparator directly into

the CG so that it asynchronously overrides anything that's coming from

the software from the rest of the European architecture

and we can truncate the duty cycle and turn off the PWM immediately as fast as

possible so usually these comparators have a propagation delay of between 30

and 50 nanoseconds and this is the timeframe in which she can shut down can

you respond to fault and shut down the power supply economy so what we can do

with these PWM controllers now is a lot so as I said potentially you can support

all kind of different configurations for specific topologies it does not only

cover fixed frequency you can also setup the peripherals to support user 80

controls like internal time constant of time quasi resonant converters resonant

converters so the variety of possibilities is really really wide so

for just to keep things simple let's just start with fixed frequency

operation off a standard topology and this is what we are doing with this

starter kit so this starter kit we have used a simple synchronous buck converter

not only because it's safe to operate it easy to compensate but also because

everyone is very familiar with this topology so this starter kit now comes

with multiple options so that it can play an experiment and explore a little

bit the capabilities of the part play with different configurations and see

how you can solve different design challenges by using different

modifications of a preset of provided examples so when we are looking into the

hardware we find that this port is as a power supply on the lower side so this

is where we find our synchronous buck converter so that buck converter has

been designed for a power level of approximately 25 watts so the maximum

current call from the outputs at 3.3 volt is

roughly at around 8 m/s so you're above this is where we have find our

controller so that controller is bigger than it would be necessary for that

single topology so we have picked our superset device providing up to four

independent pwm controller peripheral sets the reason why we have done that is

to allow you to switch between different control modes so we have set up one PWM

control of the voltage mode another one for pico remote control in the third one

for average current mode control we use the peripherals of the fourth one to add

more advanced functions one of them for example is VCR sensing so one of the

current feedback options provided by the power plant is a RC network which is

tied in parallel to the main inductor and which can be used to to use a

lossless sensing technique which is fairly popular especially in low voltage

here will applications to implement that function we need an additional append so

as the op-amp is still available from the fourth PWM controller architecture