Power controller optimized for AC/DC, DC/DC design

Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) has expanded its line of analog and digital power management solutions with the release of UCD3138. According to the company, the device is optimized for AC/DC and isolated DC/DC power supply applications.

UCD3138 yields an increase in power density and reliability in a broad range of power supply topologies used in servers, telecom rectifiers and high-power DC/DC modules, stated the company. Its 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, UCD3138 combines a 32bit microprocessor, high-speed precision data converters, multiple programmable hardware control loops and various communication engines in a 6 x 6mm package, added TI.

The device claims to boosts peak and light load efficiency. It features several control functions to increase efficiency, including sync-FET soft on-off control, dynamic phase shedding, dynamic frequency adjustment and dynamic mode switching, noted the company. UCD3138 also supports all isolated power supply topologies including single-phase, two-phase interleaved, or bridgeless power factor correction, hard-switching full-bridge, phase-shifted full-bridge, resonant LLC and others. Likewise, it implements peak current mode control, cycle-by-cycle peak current limiting, high-speed input voltage feed-forward, overvoltage, overcurrent and overtemperature protection.

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 GUI software tool provides flexible configuration of key power parameters, as well as telemetry, logging and communication functions. A range of hardware design tools such as control card and open-loop evaluation modules are available to select customers. In addition TI offers development kits and reference designs.

UCD3138 is sampling with volume production expected in Q2. It comes in a thermally enhanced 40-pin, 6 x 6mm QFN package and supports a temperature range of -40°C to 125°C. Suggested resale pricing is $2.70 in 1,000-unit quantities. A 64-pin, 9 x 9mm QFN version of UCD3138 is priced at $4.10 in 1,000-unit quantities.