Evaluation kit eases path into digital power control

3rd May 2016

Mick Elliott

0 0

Datasheet

Worldwide availability of the new XMC Digital Power Explorer Kit from Infineon has been announced by RS Components. The kit was created for analogue power supply designers and embedded software programmers to help accelerate their learning in the capabilities of digital power control. The kit is also very useful for digital engineers to gather a better understanding of PMBusTM technologies for the digital control of power supplies.

It allows the easy and efficient development of almost any power topology combination including voltage, current or customised control.

The kit was developed in collaboration with Biricha Digital, which designed the buck converter board using the free-for-download DesignSpark PCB design software, and Würth Elektronik, which provided connectors and passive components including high-performance inductors and capacitors ideally suited to digital power control applications.

The XMCTM Digital Power Explorer Kit also features two Infineon ARM Cortex-M based XMC-microcontroller control cards, as well as Infineon’s DAVE v4 IDE software development platform for XMC microcontrollers, which is a free-of-charge code-generation system.

Ideal for applications such as industrial, telecom and server power conversion, the kit’s primary purpose is to help digital and power engineers bridge the technology gap to create digital power control solutions.

In addition, power system demands are rapidly increasing in terms of flexibility, accuracy, step response and ripple, among other factors. To address these issues, power engineers increasingly need to explore the capabilities of the PMBusTM and incorporate basic digital-control techniques for modern power system design.

The kit main board includes a synchronous buck DC/DC converter with on-board resistive load banks, which can be switched between 10%, 55% and 100% of the maximum load to enable the testing of the transient response and the quality of the control loop under different load conditions, such as continuous-conduction versus discontinuous-conduction mode.

Voltage-mode and peak-current-mode control with slope compensation are also available for the user to experiment.

The kit includes two of Infineon’s industry-leading XMCTM range of ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers, OptiMOSTM BSC0924NDI MOSFETs, and IRS2011S high- and low-side drivers.

The control card options are an ARM Cortex-M0 based XMC1300 control card and an ARM Cortex-M4F XMC4200 control card with isolated on-board debugger, which allow designers to easily evaluate both XMC microcontroller families. The XMC4200 has high-resolution PWM (150ps) and smart-analogue comparators.

Multiple test points are provided on the power board to check the quality of all relevant signals, and a communication option via PMBusTM is provided for easy integration into more complex power management systems.

Full software support is provided including Infineon’s DAVE v4 IDE software development platform for XMC microcontrollers, a free code-generation system that also provides digital power application examples to enable users to get the most out of the XMC kit.