TI intros next-gen digital power controller for isolated power supplies

DALLAS, USA: Expanding its broad portfolio of analog and digital power management solutions, Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) has introduced the industry's most integrated and configurable digital power management controller optimized for AC/DC and isolated DC/DC power supply applications.

The UCD3138 gives designers an innovative path to increase power density and reliability in a broad range of power supply topologies used in servers, telecom rectifiers and high-power DC/DC modules.

Digital control capabilities allow designers to do more with their power systems, including re-usability of hardware designs across multiple platforms and the versatility to fine-tune performance and control parameters for each application, allowing faster time to market. To enable this, the UCD3138 combines a powerful 32-bit microprocessor, high-speed precision data converters, multiple programmable hardware control loops and various communication engines in a small 6-mm x 6-mm package.

Key features and benefits of the UCD3138
* Boosts peak and light load efficiency: The device features several control functions to increase efficiency, including sync-FET soft on-off control, dynamic phase shedding, dynamic frequency adjustment and dynamic mode switching.
* Supports all isolated power supply topologies: The controller supports single-phase, two-phase interleaved, or bridgeless power factor correction, hard-switching full-bridge, phase-shifted full-bridge, resonant LLC and other topologies.
* Integrates all essential protection features: The device implements peak current mode control, cycle-by-cycle peak current limiting, high-speed input voltage feed-forward, over-voltage, over-current and over-temperature protection.

Easy-to-use GUI and development tools
* Designers will have easy access to several digital power development tools including full-voltage and feature-rich evaluation modules, development kits, reference designs, application firmware source code, programmer's manuals and the Code Composer Studio software development environment.

TI's Fusion Digital Power Designer graphical user interface (GUI) software tool provides flexible configuration of key power parameters, as well as telemetry, logging, and communication functions. A broad range of hardware design tools, such as control card and open-loop evaluation modules, are available to select customers. In addition TI offers easy-to-use development kits and reference designs.