This is a U.S. national phase application under 35 U.S.C. §371 of International Patent Application No. PCT/JP2007/055906, filed Mar. 22, 2007, and claims the benefit of Japanese Application No. 2006-098471, filed Mar. 31, 2006, both of which are incorporated by reference herein. The International Application was published in Japanese on Oct. 11, 2007 as International Publication No. WO 2007/114068 A1 under PCT Article 21(2).
The present invention relates to a digital controller incorporated in a power amplifier or the like such as a switching regulator to control an output voltage supplied to load, particularly to a digital controller which can meet both a load variation and a power supply voltage fluctuation with a single configuration.
In a switching regulator as one type of a power amplifier for supplying electric power to a load device, an LC filter is commonly inserted between output terminals of the switching regulator and the load device in order to eliminate noises. When a load connecting line that connects the output terminals of the switching regulator and the load device is long, an equivalent circuitry with the same function as that obtained by inserting the above LC filter is resulted due to floating capacitance and inductance components present in the load connecting line.
Further, a negative feedback circuit 18 for remotely sensing a load voltage vL is connected with a load connecting line connecting both the terminals of the capacitor 8 and the load device 9. Hereunder is a description of the negative feedback circuit 18. A series circuit of resistors 10, 11 is connected between the load connecting lines. The load voltage vL is divided by the resistors 10, 11 and the voltage thus divided is input to an inverting input terminal of an error amplifier 12. A reference voltage of a reference voltage supply 13 is input to a noninverting input terminal of the error amplifier 12. An output terminal of the error amplifier 12 is connected with a cathode of a photo diode 15. An anode of the photo diode 15 is connected, via the resistor 14, with one terminal, a positive side of the load voltage vL, of the capacitor 8. Further, a capacitor 16 is connected between an output terminal and the inverting input terminal of the error amplifier 12. The photo diode 15 pairs with a phototransistor 17 and thus when the photo diode 15 conducts, a signal caused by the conduction is input to the controller 4 via the phototransistor 17. The feedback circuit 18 functions to feedback comparison information between the load voltage vL and the reference voltage, so that the controller 4 performs the well-known controls such as PWM control and PFM control for a switching pulse input to gates of the switching elements 2, 3.
According to the analogue control described above, there has been a problem that when the LC filter is connected with load of the switching regulator, or the load connecting line is long, sensing of a load side causes output oscillation.
As a solution to solve this problem, Patent Document 1 discloses a technique in which a target value of an output terminal voltage is calculated in anticipation of a voltage drop in the load connecting line without setting the sensing point at a load end, whereby feedback control is performed in which an influence of the voltage drop in the load connecting line is taken into account.
According to the method of the above patent document 1, however, from the result of multiplying a load current value by a load connecting line conducting resistance, a voltage drop due to the load connecting line is estimated to correct a target value of a voltage at a load end. Hence, a high-speed response to a load variation cannot be performed, resulting in instability of an output voltage.
Therefore, in view of the above problem, it is an object of the present invention to provide a digital controller which enables such control as to supply a desired voltage to a load without causing oscillation even if sensing a load side is performed.
According to first to fifth aspects of the present invention, there is provided a digital controller incorporated in an electric power supply which supplies an output voltage vo to a load connected via a load connecting line, the digital controller being equipped with a manipulating variable calculator built up so as to realize a control system obtained by equivalently converting a formula for calculating manipulating variable ξ1 for the electric power supply with an output voltage vo, a load voltage vL that is a load end voltage, and an arbitrary target value r of the load voltage vL, defined as input. The manipulating variable calculator is configured to calculate manipulating variable ξ1 according to a formula 1 described below.
Accordingly, when an LC filter is connected with the load of the electric power supply as a control target or a load connecting line is long, a robust digital controller without oscillating even if sensing the load side is performed can be realized.
Further, a sixth aspect of the present invention is a digital controller in which the manipulating variable calculator is schemed to omit parameters too small to largely influence a control system from among parameters used to calculate the manipulating variable ξ1 (xi1).
Furthermore, a seventh aspect of the present invention is a digital controller in which the manipulating variable calculator is schemed so as to dispense with each of feedforward multipliers.
Accordingly, the formula for calculating the manipulating variable ξ1 is simplified to enable arithmetic processing to speed up and a calculator to be simplified.
According to the first to fifth aspects of the present invention, a digital controller can be provided in which even if sensing the load side is performed, there occurs no oscillation to enable a desired voltage to be applied to a load.
Further, according to sixth and seventh aspects of the present invention, high-speed digital control becomes possible. Besides, the configuration of the calculator is simplified, thus enabling a cost to be controlled.
Hereinafter, a preferred embodiment of a digital controller according to the present invention is described with reference to the appended drawings, in which the same reference symbols are used for parts the same as in a conventional example and common descriptions thereof are omitted for avoiding duplicate descriptions as much as possible.
The robust digital controller 20 comprises an A/D converter 21 which periodically samples (discretization) analogue signals such as an output voltage vo and the load voltage vL to convert the signals sampled into digital signals, the manipulating variable calculator 22 which calculates a manipulating variable ξ1 based on feedback signals made discrete by the A/D converter 21, i.e., the above digital signals and a target value r, and a PWM output unit 23, acting as a control output unit, which produces, in response to the manipulating variable ξ1, switching pulses acting as control signals to output the switching pulses to the gates of the switching elements 2, 3. The robust digital controller 20 according to the present invention detects, with the A/D converter 21, at least two points of the output voltage vo and load voltage vL or up to four points if including an output choke coil current iLf and a load inductance current iLL to determine the manipulating variable ξ1 for control. The manipulating variable ξ1 referred to here corresponds to a duty of the switching pulses in the case of, e.g., PWM control. The present invention can be applied to PFM control or the like. When being applied to the PFM control, the manipulating variable ξ1 corresponds to the frequency of the switching pulse. Furthermore, the present invention can be applied to all power supply devices in which the LC filter is connected with load of the power supply device and hence a noise reduction in power supply output can be easily attained.
Next is a description of the manipulating variable calculator 22 that features the robust digital controller 20 with reference to
Describing each configuration in the block diagram in
{dot over (x)}d=Adxd+Bdu
y=Cdxd [Formula 6]
Depending on the circuitry, appropriate values are determined for each of matrixes Ad, Bd and Cd.
At the same time, parts other than the control target elements 30 correspond to the manipulating variable calculator 22 of the robust digital controller 20 building up an integral type control system. The manipulating variable calculator 22 comprises a combination of each of the transfer elements 31, 33 and 34 acting as a digital filter and an adding point 22 acting as an adder. Then, transfer functions Gr, GVO and GVL of each of the transfer elements 31, 33 and 34, respectively are expressed as the following formulae 7.
where GVO denotes a transfer function from the output voltage vo to the ξ1,
GVL denotes a transfer function from the load voltage vL to the manipulating variable ξ1, and
Gr, denotes a transfer function from a target value r of the load voltage to the ξ1,
and therefore the manipulating variable ξ1 acting as an output from the adding point 32 can be expressed as the following formula 8.
In the above formulae 7, 8, z=exp (jωt) and H, Hr are poles of transfer functions specified between the target value r and the control variable y and further kz, F12, F14, F15, F16, F112, F132 are parameters preset depending on the control system.
Describing more minutely the fundamental configuration shown in
In the above formula, when noting an integrator 1/(z−1) provided in each of the transfer functions GVL, Gr, the controller configuration shown in
Describing more minutely the configuration shown in
Further, when noting the structure of each of the transfer functions GVO, Gr2, GVL2 in
With respect to the generalized transfer function G, when an input and an output are defined as u and y, respectively, the following formula 11 can be expressed and when expressing the transfer function G with a block diagram,
In
Each of the transfer elements 33, 40, 41, 44 shown in
Now the configuration shown in
The switching regulator using the robust digital controller 20 thus obtained generates no oscillation even if sensing the load side is performed when the LC filter is connected with the load of the switching regulator or the load connecting line is long.
As described above, the robust digital controller 20 according to the present embodiment is a digital controller incorporated in the electric power supply for supplying the output voltage vo to the load device 9 connected via the load connecting line and besides is equipped with the manipulating variable calculator 22 which calculates the manipulating variable ξ1 for the electric power supply with the output voltage vo, the load voltage vL that is a voltage across the load, an arbitrary target value r, defined as input.
Further, in the robust digital controller 20 according to the present embodiment, the manipulating variable calculator 22 is equipped with a feedforawrd element 40 corresponding to a first manipulating variable calculator with the target value r defined as input, the feedback element 33 corresponding to a second manipulating variable calculator with the output voltage vo defined as input, the feedback element 41 corresponding to a third manipulating variable calculator with the load voltage vL defined as input, the adding point 42 acting as a subtracter which outputs the difference between the target value r and the load voltage vL, the integral element 43 acting as an integrator which integrates a difference output from the adding point 42, and the transfer element 44 corresponding to a fourth manipulating variable calculator with the output from the integral element 43, defined as input. Then, the robust digital controller 20 according to the present embodiment performs an arithmetic operation using the first to fourth manipulating variable calculators to output the manipulating variable ξ1.
Further, in the robust digital controller 20 according to the present embodiment, in accordance with the following formula,
(where z=exp(jωt), H and Hr are poles of the transfer function specified between the target value r and the control variable y, and further kz, F12, F14, F15, F16, F112, F132, are preset given parameters) the manipulating variable calculator is so schemed as to calculate the manipulating variable ξ1.
Furthermore, in the robust digital controller 20 according to the present embodiment, the manipulating variable calculator 22 comprises the following elements and the adding points:
the feedforward element 40 to which the target value r is input and acts as a first digital filter with a transfer function Gr2 expressed by the formula 13,
the feedback element 33 to which the output voltage vo is input and acts as a second digital filter with a transfer function GVO expressed by the formula 14,
the feedback element 41 to which the load voltage vL is input and acts as a third digital filter with a transfer function GVL2 expressed by the formula 15,
the adding point 42 acting as a subtracter which outputs the difference between the target value r and the load voltage vL, the integral element 43 acting as an integrator which integrates the difference output from the adding point 42, and the transfer element 44 to which the output from the integral element 43 is input and acts as a fourth digital filter with a transfer function Ge expressed by the formula 16,
and further the adding point 32 acting as an adder which adds outputs from the feedforward element 40, the feedback elements 33, 41 and the transfer element 44 to output the manipulating variable ξ1.
Furthermore, in the robust digital controller 20 according to the present embodiment, the manipulating variable calculator 22 is configured as follows: connected is the feedforward elements 60, 61 acting as each of feedforward multipliers which multiply the parameters Hr, H by the target value r defined as input; connected is the feedback elements 62, 64 acting as each of feedback multipliers which multiply the parameters F12, F14 by the output voltage vo defined as input; the feedback elements 63, 65 which multiply the parameters F112, F132 by the load voltage vL defined as input; the difference between the target value r and the load voltage vL d is input from the adding point 42 to the integral element 43 acting as an integrator; the output from the integral element 43 is input to the transfer elements 66, 67 each acting as a multiplier which does the multiplication of each of the parameters Hkz, Hrkz, respectively; the output from the transfer element 67 of the parameter Hrkz, the output from the feedback elements 64, 52, 54, 65 each acting as a multiplier which does the multiplication of the parameters F14, F15 F16, F132, respectively, and the output from the feedforward element 60 which does the multiplication of the parameter Hr are added at the adding point 51 acting as a first adder 51; the output produced by the addition at the adding point 51 is input to the delay element 53 acting as a delay element for performing delay of one sampling time; the delayed output ξ2 from the delay element 53 is input to the output from the feedback element 54 with the parameters F16, the delayed output ξ2 from the delay element 53, the outputs from each of the feedback elements 62, 63 with the parameters F12, F112, the output from the feedforward element 61 with the parameter H, and the output from the transfer element 66 with the parameter Hkz are added at the adding point 55 acting as a second adder; the output produced by the addition at the adding point 55 is input to the delay element 57 acting as a second delay element for performing delay of one sampling time; and the delayed output ξ1 from the delay element 57 is input to the feedback element 52 with the parameter F15.
Consequently, when the LC filter is connected with the load device 9 of the power amplifier intended for the control target and the load connecting line is long, the robust digital controller without oscillating in its output if sensing the load side can be realized. Accordingly, a digital controller can be provided which develops no oscillation even if sensing the load side is performed and can apply a desired voltage to the load device.
Moreover, in the robust digital controller 20 according to the present embodiment, the manipulating variable calculator 22 is so schemed as to omit the parameters which are too small to influence largely the control system from among the parameters H, Hr, kz, F12, F14 F15, F16, F112, F132.
Further, in the robust digital controller 20 according to the present embodiment, the manipulating variable calculator 22 is so schemed as to omit each of the feedfoward elements 60, 61
Hence, a formula for arithmetic operation of the manipulating variable ξ1 is simplified, permitting the high-speed digital control or permitting the costs to be curbed by simplifying the structure of the calculator.
In addition, the present invention is not limited to the above embodiment and various modifications are possible within the scope not departing the gist of the present invention. A wide variety of types of converters such as an insulated type converter using a transformer, a converter with a plurality of switching elements (e.g., a half-bridge converter and a full-bridge converter) or the like is, e.g., applicable for the configuration of the converter, shown in
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
2006-098471 | Mar 2006 | JP | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
---|---|---|---|---|
PCT/JP2007/055906 | 3/22/2007 | WO | 00 | 5/1/2008 |
Publishing Document | Publishing Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
WO2007/114068 | 10/11/2007 | WO | A |
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
5977831 | Davis et al. | Nov 1999 | A |
6255908 | Ghannouchi et al. | Jul 2001 | B1 |
Number | Date | Country |
---|---|---|
08-044438 | Feb 1996 | JP |
09-034561 | Feb 1997 | JP |
2005-25328 | Jan 2005 | JP |
2005-253284 | Sep 2005 | JP |
2006-50723 | Feb 2006 | JP |
2006013776 | Feb 2006 | WO |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
20090099704 A1 | Apr 2009 | US |