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Solutions to Low Voltage Power Design Using Point of Load Converters featuring the MFP Series™
This paper discusses the numerous challenges that design engineers face in satisfying the power delivery requirements of today’s electronic systems. The multitude of low-voltage, high current loads and increased system power efficiency requirements make yesterday’s typical design approaches increasingly less practical, and design requirements increasingly more difficult to achieve. A discussion of these challenges is presented including previous common solutions and introducing the Point of Load (POL) converter as an ideal high-efficiency, high-reliability solution.
POL converter implementation is discussed and relevant issues highlighted, including main power input bus considerations, conducted noise, control stability, current limiting and current sharing, environmental ruggedness, design analysis and some of the many features offered in top-of-the-line POL converters. Product usability, the ability of the end user to successfully implement the POL and attain the specified performance specifications over the full environmental and electrical specifications without additional circuitry, is discussed. The Interpoint MFP Series™ POL is presented throughout the paper and how it addresses many of the design challenges presented is discussed. While the authors clearly favor a particular solution, this discussion is intended to be of general use to all engineers tasked with powering low-voltage loads in high-reliability systems.