new 30MHz to 300MHz switcher - worlds smallest laptop adapter

On Wed, 25 Dec 2013 06:00:53 -0800 (PST), the renowned Artem
<artem.bond@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wednesday, December 25, 2013 3:35:26 PM UTC+2, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>
>> 
>> >3. Efficiency will be low because transistor in linear mode. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Normally everybody screams: 'switcher switcher switcher'.
>> 
>> Switcher transistors have an efficiency problem if they cannot switch fast enough,
>> 
>> power is dissipated during the on and of switching times.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I was proposing (I dunno about that professor), to use a SINE wave converter.
>
>
>Yes. And main benefit of resonant converter is decreasing switching losses by switching when current is minimum.
>For linear amplifier theoretical efficiency only  78.5% 
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amplifier#Class_B

GaN technology is about ready. Even the drivers are off-the-shelf.  


Best regards, 
Spehro Pefhany
-- 
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

On Wed, 25 Dec 2013 08:21:45 -0800, the renowned John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

>
>
>Sounds like yet more MIT vaporware. I doubt that 0.1% of MIT's press-release
>inventions ever work.

According to a presentation I saw on licensed inventions from another
university (Kirsten Leute @ Stanford), they've taken in 1.6bn in
licensing fees since 1971 and get disclosures at higher than a daily
basis, and _start_ patent applications on ~50% but they have not had a
new high-income winner in about 18 years. The last big one was
Google-related (1996 $337m as of 2012- they took some equity which
paid off big)... but mostly life sciences/biotech stuff with a couuple
of communications/EE inventions. Before 1996 it was every 2-3 years
between big hits.  

I guess one could speculate on whether the pace of home-run inventions
has actually slowed down, or something else is going on. 


Best regards, 
Spehro Pefhany
-- 
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

On Wed, 25 Dec 2013 14:54:11 -0500, Spehro Pefhany
<speffSNIP@interlogDOTyou.knowwhat> wrote:

>On Wed, 25 Dec 2013 08:21:45 -0800, the renowned John Larkin
><jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>Sounds like yet more MIT vaporware. I doubt that 0.1% of MIT's press-release
>>inventions ever work.
>
>According to a presentation I saw on licensed inventions from another
>university (Kirsten Leute @ Stanford), they've taken in 1.6bn in
>licensing fees since 1971 and get disclosures at higher than a daily
>basis, and _start_ patent applications on ~50% but they have not had a
>new high-income winner in about 18 years.


OK, my bad, I was optimistic in my 0.1% estimate. 


 The last big one was
>Google-related (1996 $337m as of 2012- they took some equity which
>paid off big)... but mostly life sciences/biotech stuff with a couuple
>of communications/EE inventions. Before 1996 it was every 2-3 years
>between big hits.  
>
>I guess one could speculate on whether the pace of home-run inventions
>has actually slowed down, or something else is going on. 
>

Two things are going on at many universities: a push for patents and a
press-release mill.

Web sites, like phys.org and a zillion others, are hungry for content, and the
university press departments (which didn't used to exist) are happy to provide
it. Every little research paper, which in past years would have died in deserved
obscurity, is now announced as a huge breakthrough.

Crowdsourcing makes this trend even more interesting. These goofy press releases
can now be quickly monetized if you can generate enough publicity and promises.
Tens of thousands of people put up a couple hundred dollars each, and their
money fades away over some years, so there's no big noise over it.




-- 

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com   

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

On Wednesday, December 25, 2013 2:54:11 PM UTC-5, Spehro Pefhany wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Dec 2013 08:21:45 -0800, the renowned John Larkin wrote:

> >Sounds like yet more MIT vaporware. I doubt that 0.1% of MIT's press-release
> >inventions ever work.
> 
> According to a presentation I saw on licensed inventions from another
> university (Kirsten Leute @ Stanford), they've taken in 1.6bn in
> licensing fees since 1971 and get disclosures at higher than a daily
> basis, and _start_ patent applications on ~50% but they have not had a
> new high-income winner in about 18 years. The last big one was
> Google-related (1996 $337m as of 2012- they took some equity which
> paid off big)... but mostly life sciences/biotech stuff with a couuple
> of communications/EE inventions. Before 1996 it was every 2-3 years
> between big hits.  
> 
> I guess one could speculate on whether the pace of home-run inventions
> has actually slowed down, or something else is going on. 

It's my impression that either from conviction or
poor risk/reward conditions, there is less inventing
in the US.
People are spending time mitigating risk and cost,
not seeking it.

OTOH, there's all sorts of opportunity for inventions
and synergy--cheap wireless, FLASH, GHz CPU, etc.

Cheers,
James Arthur

On Wednesday, December 25, 2013 9:32:57 AM UTC-5, dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, December 25, 2013 8:14:48 AM UTC-5, Artem wrote:
> > On Wednesday, December 25, 2013 3:00:41 PM UTC+2, Jan Panteltje wrote:
> > 
> > > On a sunny day (Wed, 25 Dec 2013 04:46:36 -0800 (PST)) it happened Artem
> > 
> > > drivers, although low current, 100 mA at 230 V is already 23 W.
> > 
> > 1. It's only for 110v power grid.
> > 2. Bandwidth TV only 6.5 Mhz. 
> > 3. Efficiency will be low because transistor in linear mode.
> 
> However annoying patents are, these things are always patented, and
> have to be.  These guys filed in 2009.  Without patents it wouldn't
> make sense to do all that work--make all that investment--only
> to have it ripped off the nanosecond you ship.
> 
> The front end is a capacitive charge pump that charges many capacitors
> and switches in series, then flips another set of switches to
> discharge the caps in parallel, creating a raw output.  A
> synchronous buck efficiently regulates the rough voltage
> thus created down to the desired output.
> 
> It runs the switches and caps at HV in series, so only low
> voltage switches are needed.  Ditto for the finishing regulator.
> 
> http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8212541.PN.&OS=PN/8212541&RS=PN/8212541
> 
> 
> The main inventive notion here seems to have been getting the operations
> within the range of fast, low-voltage elements.
> 
> 
> 
> I haven't looked at it in depth yet..time for Christmas!

Okay, I looked at it a little deeper.

I missed on a couple points.

First, the switched capacitor switches aren't low voltage.  There
are only a few of them, so that doesn't fly.  Also, when S1 of
Fig. 6 is open, one of the switches S2 has to stand off the entire
input voltage.  Let's hope S2 never pops!

Second, I figured out the "energy recirculation" -- it's kind
of elegant.  The charge pump efficiency is improved by charging
the series capacitor string *through the synchronous buck*.
That way, the series capacitor strings' peak charge current is
controlled, avoiding inrush charging losses.  That's clever.

In effect, the buck runs off the switched-cap converter's ripple
voltage when the cap string is in series, and off the charge
pump caps in parallel during the paralleled time.

It also means you don't need nearly as many switched-cap stages
to get to the roughed output used to feed the sync. buck.

The VHF aspect is confined to the synch. buck finishing regulator.
Its low input voltage allows the use of fast, small geometry
devices.

There,  I think that's the gist of it.

No galvanic isolation, which might be changed by substitution of
a suitable isolated "buck."

Cheers,
James Arthur

On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Dec 2013 06:12:13 -0800 (PST)) it happened
dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote in
<9ddfcffb-b280-4186-a67c-767915226b2d@googlegroups.com>:

>Okay, I looked at it a little deeper.
>
>I missed on a couple points.
>
>First, the switched capacitor switches aren't low voltage.  There
>are only a few of them, so that doesn't fly.  Also, when S1 of
>Fig. 6 is open, one of the switches S2 has to stand off the entire
>input voltage.  Let's hope S2 never pops!
>
>Second, I figured out the "energy recirculation" -- it's kind
>of elegant.  The charge pump efficiency is improved by charging
>the series capacitor string *through the synchronous buck*.
>That way, the series capacitor strings' peak charge current is
>controlled, avoiding inrush charging losses.  That's clever.
>
>In effect, the buck runs off the switched-cap converter's ripple
>voltage when the cap string is in series, and off the charge
>pump caps in parallel during the paralleled time.
>
>It also means you don't need nearly as many switched-cap stages
>to get to the roughed output used to feed the sync. buck.
>
>The VHF aspect is confined to the synch. buck finishing regulator.
>Its low input voltage allows the use of fast, small geometry
>devices.
>
>There,  I think that's the gist of it.
>
>No galvanic isolation, which might be changed by substitution of
>a suitable isolated "buck."

So then you need that transformer again, and an other synchr. rectifier,
a simple diode there would ruin efficiency.
May as well go without the cap switches network then...???

dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:


> The front end is a capacitive charge pump that charges many capacitors
> and switches in series, then flips another set of switches to
> discharge the caps in parallel, creating a raw output.  A
> synchronous buck efficiently regulates the rough voltage
> thus created down to the desired output.

Oh, my!  A Marx generator run in reverse.  Well, lots of
possible places things could break down, or just lose energy.

Jon

In article <gfudnbXLT8vCDCHPnZ2dnUVZ_tCdnZ2d@giganews.com>, 
jmelson@wustl.edu says...
> 
> dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
> 
> 
> > The front end is a capacitive charge pump that charges many capacitors
> > and switches in series, then flips another set of switches to
> > discharge the caps in parallel, creating a raw output.  A
> > synchronous buck efficiently regulates the rough voltage
> > thus created down to the desired output.
> 
> Oh, my!  A Marx generator run in reverse.  Well, lots of
> possible places things could break down, or just lose energy.
> 
> Jon

Exactly, nothing new here, just some one trying to bank on
old tech..

Jamie

Maynard A. Philbrook Jr. wrote:


> Exactly, nothing new here, just some one trying to bank on
> old tech..
And, he apparently got $9 million for it!  Not BAD!
Wish I had great "ideas" like this!

Jon

On Thursday, December 26, 2013 9:59:44 AM UTC-5, Jan Panteltje wrote:
> On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Dec 2013 06:12:13 -0800 (PST)) it happened
> dagmarg...@yahoo.com wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> >Okay, I looked at it a little deeper.
> >
> >I missed on a couple points.
> >
> >First, the switched capacitor switches aren't low voltage.  There
> >are only a few of them, so that doesn't fly.  Also, when S1 of
> 
> >Fig. 6 is open, one of the switches S2 has to stand off the entire
> >input voltage.  Let's hope S2 never pops!
> >
> >Second, I figured out the "energy recirculation" -- it's kind
> >of elegant.  The charge pump efficiency is improved by charging
> >the series capacitor string *through the synchronous buck*.
> >That way, the series capacitor strings' peak charge current is
> >controlled, avoiding inrush charging losses.  That's clever.
> >
> >In effect, the buck runs off the switched-cap converter's ripple
> >voltage when the cap string is in series, and off the charge
> >pump caps in parallel during the paralleled time.
> >
> >It also means you don't need nearly as many switched-cap stages
> >to get to the roughed output used to feed the sync. buck.
> >
> >The VHF aspect is confined to the synch. buck finishing regulator.
> >Its low input voltage allows the use of fast, small geometry
> >devices.
> >
> >There,  I think that's the gist of it.
> >
> >No galvanic isolation, which might be changed by substitution of
> >a suitable isolated "buck."
> 
> So then you need that transformer again, and an other synchr. rectifier,
> a simple diode there would ruin efficiency.
> May as well go without the cap switches network then...???

You need the cap-switch network.  The low input voltage into the
synch. buck is what produces the other opportunities:
 1. the cap-switching reverse Marx generator (thanks Jon!)
    makes a low, unregulated voltage pretty efficiently.
 2. The synchronous buck can use low-voltage, low resistance,
    low Qc FETs that scream.

The patent suggests running the cap-switcher at, say, 1Mhz, and
the synch. buck at 5-100x that.

Ramifications: the low voltage differential into the buck
increases the buck's duty cycle, which increases efficiency.
Low voltage differential also reduces the inductance needed
for a given ripple current, which increases efficiency,
reduces volume, and reduces copper losses, which reduces volume
even more.

There's usually a fatal flaw.  Haven't seen it yet, but it looks
fragile--lots of switches have to flip reliably, or you smoke it.

Cheers,
James Arthur