Meeting the Changing Power Needs of Evolving Portable Systems

Meeting the Changing Power Needs of Evolving Portable Systems

By Bill Weiss, Advanced Analogic Technologies Inc. (AnalogicTech)

Over the last several years portable system designers have increasingly used large, highly integrated Power Management Units (PMUs) to achieve tremendous advantages in footprint and cost. When consumers think of how small and more affordable their mobile handset or MP3 player is today, they typically think of the rapid advances in digital integration.

Bill Weiss, Advanced Analogic Technologies Inc.

By Bill Weiss, Advanced Analogic Technologies Inc. (AnalogicTech)

Over the last several years portable system designers have increasingly used large, highly integrated Power Management Units (PMUs) to achieve tremendous advantages in footprint and cost. When consumers think of how small and more affordable their mobile handset or MP3 player is today, they typically think of the rapid advances in digital integration. But clearly some of the credit for the rapidly declining footprint and cost of cell phones, MP3 players, digital cameras and other portable devices can be attributed to the use of complex PMUs that combine numerous power circuits to manage functions as far ranging as battery charging, display backlighting, camera flash drive, and powering noise-sensitive RF circuits.

The relentlessly changing demands of today’s consumer electronics customers are placing new constraints on the use of large PMUs, however. The larger and more complex a PMU, the more upfront planning and product development time it requires. Moreover, as designers integrate more functions into a power management device, it inevitably ends up targeted at a specific application. So as portable system designers move to more complex PMUs, they must do a better job of anticipating market demands.

That’s becoming an increasingly difficult task in today’s rapidly changing markets. Oftentimes a design team must add new functionality on short notice to meet a surprising new customer requirement or the rapid ramp up of a new technology. Current examples of such new functionality are integrated WiFi, FM radio, Digital Audio Broadcast, Digital Media Broadcast, Digital Video Broadcast, Terrestrial TV, and many more. Perhaps more importantly, how does a design team retain the flexibility to quickly respond to new market needs such as these and still take advantage of the cost and space savings functional integration offers?

Integration with flexibility

One way designers are addressing this problem is by using a new generation of mini-PMUs. These devices offer an attractive compromise between the integration advantages of complex PMUs and the design flexibility and quick-turn advantages of a discrete methodology. By integrating just a few power management functions, designers can add Bluetooth or some other functionality to an established design and quickly bring to market a new addition to their product line.

Let’s take a typical mini-PMU that combines an 800 mA step-down converter with two low dropout linear regulators (LDOs) that, by operating across a 1.8V to 5.5V range, are ideal for post-regulating from the step-down converter. If the design team of a successful personal navigation device (PND) suddenly needs to add Bluetooth capability, they now have three options. They can recast their existing design and replace the PMU they originally used in their system to support the new functionality. But given the time needed to respin the design, they risk losing out on this emerging market opportunity. Alternately, they can add discrete power components to their existing design. This approach will give them maximum design flexibility. But the introduction of a discrete step-down converter and discrete LDOs will inevitably drive up cost and increase the footprint of the device.

The best option often lies somewhere in between the first two choices. By adding a mini-PMU to their existing design, they can rapidly add new functionality without recasting their existing design. Moreover, the integration advantages of a mini-PMU allows them to reduce component count compared to the discrete approach and better meet the market’s demanding cost and footprint requirements.

Today’s consumer electronics market is in constant flux. As new technologies continue to emerge, the only rule that seems to apply is that the feature set consumers want today will change tomorrow. In this environment it is almost impossible for designers to find a single PMU that will serve their systems continually changing power needs. By using mini-PMUs to complement their existing feature set, portable system designers can keep pace with these evolving demands and still reap the cost and space advantages of functional integration.

Bill Weiss is the Product Line Director at Advanced Analogic Technologies Inc. (AnalogicTech) responsible for voltage regulation products. During his 20 years in the semiconductor industry, he has focused on analog and power management technology. Prior to joining AnalogicTech, Bill was a Director of Marketing at National Semiconductor. Earlier in his career, Bill held a variety of engineering and technical marketing positions at Philips Semiconductors and Allegro MicroSystems. He earned an MBA from Clark University and a BS in electrical engineering, mathematics and economics from Carnegie Mellon University.

For details of the power management offerings from AnalogicTech, click here: power management.