Envelope-Following Method for the Efficient Transient Simulation of Switching Power and Filter Circuits

摘要

The transient behavior of circuits like switching power converters and switched capacitor filters are expensive to simulate because these circuits are clocked at a frequency whose period is orders of magnitude smaller than the time interval of interest to the designer. It is possible to reduce the simulation time without compromising accuracy by exploiting the property that the behavior of such a circuit in a given high frequency clock cycle is similar, but not identical, to the behavior in the preceding and following cycles. In particular, the 'envelope' of the high-frequency clock can be followed by accurately computing the circuit behavior over occasional cycles. In this paper the implementation of such an envelope-following method that is particularly efficient for switching power and filter circuits is described, and results demonstrating the method's effectiveness are presented. (RH)