Load Sharing Low Dropout Regulators Using Accurate Current Sensing

The growing demand for high performance and power hungry portable electronic devices has resulted in alarmingly serious thermal concerns in recent times. The power management system of such devices has thus become increasingly more vital. An integral component of this system is a Low-Dropout Regulator (LDO) which inherently generates a low-noise power supply. Such power supplies are crucial for noise sensitive analog blocks like analog-to-digital converters, phase locked loops, radio-frequency circuits, etc. At higher output power however, a single LDO suffers from increased heat dissipation leading to thermal issues.

This research presents a novel approach to equally and accurately share a large output load current across multiple parallel LDOs to spread the dissipated heat uniformly. The proposed techniques to achieve a high load sharing accuracy of 1% include an innovative fully-integrated accurate current sensing technique based on Dynamic Element Matching and an integrator based servo loop with a low offset feedback amplifier. A novel compensation scheme based on a switched capacitor resistor is referenced to address the high 2A output current specification per LDO across an output voltage range of 1V to 3V. The presented scheme also reduces stringent requirements on off-chip board traces and number of off-chip components thereby making it suitable for portable hand-held systems. The proposed approach can theoretically be extended to any number of parallel LDOs increasing the output current range extensively. The designed load sharing LDO features fast transient response for a low quiescent current consumption of 300µA with a power-supply rejection of 60.7dB at DC. The proposed load sharing technique is verified through extensive simulations for various sources and ranges of mismatch across process, voltage and temperature.