ON-CHIP POWER MICROCONVERTERS

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This research program advances the development of new power microconverters integrated in mainstream digital CMOS fabrication processes with no off-chip devices. As the power requirements of modern microsystems grow, efficient power converters are becoming increasingly critical to the new generation of integrated circuit designs. The limitations imposed by power constraints are already sharply curbing the performance designers might otherwise expect. To overcome this challenge, distributed power processing based on new microconverters is needed to jointly optimize power, energy, and operating performance. Such optimization will lead to significantly improved system reliability, efficiency, and battery lifetime. From both circuit-level and system-level perspectives, this program investigates key design issues, control schemes, circuit architectures and future research directions which might be pursued in the development of application-aware and variable-output power microconverters. The integration of microconverters via standard digital processes will not only avoid the fabrication complexity of high-voltage devices, it will also reduce the number of heterogeneous chips and discrete components required for a given design. As a result, weight, volume and parasitic losses of interconnects will be smaller. Microconverters will be the enabling hardware platform for on-chip power processing which will, along with traditional signal processing, rise to become a key factor in next-generation microsystems. Ultimately, this research will contribute to reducing energy consumption and improving functionality of many electronic systems around us, from battery-powered mobile multimedia devices to biomedical monitoring systems and wireless sensor networks.