IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS, v.15, no.3, pp.509 - 521
Abstract
In this paper, a fully integrated active rectifier with triple feedback loops is proposed to enhance power conversion efficiency (PCE) over a wide loading range by calibrating both the gate transition timing and power switch size. The on- and off-transitions of the power switches are calibrated using a hybrid delay-based gate control circuit (HDGCC) with hybrid feedback loops. Conventional active rectifiers that only focused on calibrating the gate transition timing of a NMOS power switch with a fixed power switch size exhibit a low PCE when the loading condition deviates from the predetermined range. Thus, an automatic size selector based on a third feedback loop is proposed, which changes the power switch size based on the loading condition and ensures a stable operation of the hybrid loops by maintaining the voltage drop across the NMOS switches. An active rectifier was fabricated using the standard 0.18 mu m CMOS process. The effectiveness and robustness of the two-dimensional calibration were verified through measurements under an AC input voltage ranging from 2.5 to 5.0 V and an output power ranging from 1.25 to 125 mW. The peak voltage conversion ratio and peak PCE were 97.6% and 95.0%, respectively, at R-L = 500 omega.