Auto-Control®
Auto-Control is the industry’s first and only real-time adaptive loop compensation technology for switching power converters; it is designed to autonomously balance the trade-offs between dynamic performance and system stability.
Traditionally, the compensation is fixed in hardware during the design phase. This method requires design iteration to tune the system in order to obtain the bandwidth and phase margin needed. Additionally, design margin is built in to help address changes in component tolerances, manufacturing variations, and temperatures that the power supply may see over the course of its lifetime; this design margin can have a negative effect on the design’s performance, size, and cost.
Auto-Control does away with complex calculations and setting optimum stability. Users simply refer to Auto-Control’s algebraic range formula and ensure that their choice of output filter meets the following criteria:
LOUT - COUT Constraints for Single Phase Controllers
LOUT - COUT Constraints for Dual Phase Controllers
Transient Response with and without Auto-Control
Auto-Control adjusts P, I, and D coefficients each switching cycle to continuously achieve optimum stability over a wide range of disturbances. Auto-Control is embedded in the control architecture of Powervation devices, and does not rely on injected noise of periodic calibrations. The continuous nature of Auto-Control allows it to manage changes in the system that occur in real-time, or slowly over time while the power supply is in use.
Auto-Control Adapts to Power Stage Variation
Auto-Control’s real-time, self-adaptive loop is a key advantage for server and other applications that continually run and rarely power cycle, and for those that use efficiency maximization techniques like phase add/drop where the effective output impedance changes significantly as the load current varies. Additionally, since the self-compensation occurs on a cycle-by-cycle basis, Auto-Control is able to continuously adjust according to changes in temperature that occur while the power supply is in use, and accounts for other factors such as aging and drift.
Changing Environment
