EMI Problems Associated With DC-DC Converters

Proceedings of the 7th WSEAS International Conference on Power Systems, Beijing, China, September 15-17, 2007 232
EMI Problems associated with DC-DC Converters

ELEONORA DARIE
Electrical Department
Technical University of Civil Engineering
B-dul Pache Protopopescu 66, Sector 2, Bucharest
ROMANIA
[email protected]
EMANUEL DARIE
Engineering Department
Police Academy
Aleea Privighetorilor 1A, Sector 1, Bucharest
ROMANIA
[email protected]
Abstract: - This work presents the analysis of radiated EMI problems associated with DC-DC buck converters and the
solutions for minimize the reverse recovery of the Drain-Bulk diode of the synchronous switching MOSFET. The
DC-DC buck converter topology is used in computers and telecom applications because of its high power efficiency and
multiple DC levels. For reducing the reverse recovery and its related EMI radiation is used a technique with monolithically
integrated Schottky diodes.
Key-Words: - Electromagnetic Compatibility EMC, Conducted Radiated EMI, DC-DC Converter, Numerical
Modeling, High Frequency, Electromagnetic Waves, Conducted and Radiated Perturbances, IC Controller.
1 Introduction eliminate predominant harmonics present in the input current

With the increase of switching frequency of electronic to reduce overall peak amplitude of the frequency
switches, power converters have raised more and more spectrum. The spreading spectrum concept has been applied
electromagnetic energy pollution to the local successfully for the mitigation of conducted harmonic
environment. Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and interference of the DC-DC buck converters [5]. Using of
electromagnetic interference (EMI) norms applied to power high switching frequencies in DC-DC converters allows
converters have objective to reduce conducted and radiated magnetic components to be minimized but also enhanced
perturbances. Radiated EMI appears in the form of the spectrum of EMI caused by interaction of the active
electromagnetic waves directly from the circuitry. The components.
circuitry and its interface can influence themselves or
the transmitting antenna for this radiated EMI
emission. This emission is generally measured at 2 Problem Formulation
much higher frequencies than their conducted The simulations on radiated emissions of the
counterparts, namely beyond 30 MHz up to several GHz synchronous buck converters designed to investigate the
[2]. The new generations of microprocessors are powered by wideband and transient events, uses the conventional
local low voltages but high currents power supplies. temporal analysis, the spectral analysis and the Joint Time
Due to connector and power loss issues, power cannot be Frequency Analysis techniques (JTFA), extracting the
delivered by a remote power supply at the desired DC time-varying information on the emissions from
voltage. In addition, the fast transient current demand requires different switching activities of DC-DC buck
the power source being located close to the microprocessors. converters. The Figure 1 shows the circuit diagram of a
The most commonly used voltage regulator design is based typical synchronous DC-DC buck converter [1]. The
on the synchronous buck topology. The input power supply circuit includes the main control MOSFET switch Ql,
voltage is stepped down to the operating voltage needed by the synchronous MOSFET switch Q2, free wheeling
the microprocessor. DC-DC converters operate at Schottky diode Dl, step down inductor L1 and filtering
switching frequencies up to a few MHz. The potential EMI capacitor Cl.
problem has been well covered in the literatures [3], [4]. By The two MOSFETs switch on and off in the synchronized
operating a DC-DC converter with the soft switching scheme pattern: 1) After the main control MOSFET switches on,
without disturbing its averaged duty cycle, it is possible to current builds up in the inductor;
2) After the main control MOSFET switches off, the

inductor current freewheels through Diode and 3) Is taken
over from the diode as the MOSFET offers a lower
impedance path.
Fig. 1. Typical synchronous DC-DC

buck converter.
Fig. 3. The field spectrum of the
The simulations are based on a multi-chip power module that system from 30 MHz to 1 GHz.
includes the two MOSFET transistors, Schottky diodes, on- The field measurement on the Power IC is used to identify
chip decoupling capacitors and the high-speed gate drive noise currents within the power IC. The Figure 4 shows
controller IC. The PWM controls 4 phase interleaved the results of the near field spectrum captured with a small
synchronous buck converters that operate up to 1 MHz per magnetic loop. The small loop scans on top of the IC
phase. The average power provided by the synchronous buck and feeds the signal into the spectrum analyzer.
regulators to the microprocessor is over 120 W. The
simulated switching outputs of the power IC are shown in
Figure 2. The ringing is determined by the combination
of the switch node capacitance and the total inductance
of the current path [6]. Its resonance frequency is at
about 185 MHz.
U [V]
Fig. 4. The near field spectrum

of the power IC.
The broadband components at 185 MHz and 850 MHz
t [s]
can be identified in both the near and the far field
Fig. 2. The simulated switching output voltage measurement. The location of strongest near field
from the power controller IC module. corresponds to the location of the associated switching
semiconductor within the IC. These algorithms have
The 850 MHz emissions are of special importance, suffered a significant increase in the amount of data to
although their level is less than the level of the emissions compute and store in the real time analysis.
at lower frequencies. The data resulted from Figure 3
have been taken without enclosure, the enclosure would
shield the lower frequencies significantly better than the
850 MHz, and thus the 850 MHz will be the dominating
emission in the fully assembled system.
The STFFT [6] works same as conventional Fourier 3 Problem Solution

transformation with short block length, sliding along The reduced size Schottky diodes may not be able to carry a
with full or partial overlap. By taking the Fourier fully rated inductor current. At current levels above the
Transformation of the windowed data as the window is Schottky diode rating, the current in the synchronous buck
moved in time, a two-dimensional time-frequency regulator starts to conduct through the MOSFET body diode
image, or time-dependent spectrogram, is generated. and leads to a stronger reverse recovery [8]. The reverse
This spectrogram provides information on the recovery of the body diode will cause the high frequency
frequency components of the signals evolving with noise by rapidly injecting minority carriers into an LC
time. The long record of time domain data was taken structure formed by parasitic elements. An experimental
and processed by STFFT implemented using Matlab - setup proves that the MOSFET body diode is causing the 850
Simulink. The result is shown in Figure 5. MHz emissions. In this experiment, a secondary path is
created such that the inductor current is diverted from the IC.
Due to a DC-biasing method, it is possible to adjust the
current sharing between the external path and the path
internally to the IC. The circuit diagram is shown in Figure
7.
Fig. 5. The domain in waveform.
JTFA results show that the emission level from the system
bursts at a particular time instance which is correlated then
to every switching-on event of the buck converter. The
185 MHz and 850 MHz occur at the same time when
control MOSFET starts to switch on. This correlation
between converter switching event and its emission Fig. 7. The Schematic of the
spectrum is clearly revealed when using the JTFA. For power IC with external Schotky.
presents the advantages of this method, the STFFT analysis
of the switching output waveform is shown in Figure 6. The DC biased voltage is applied to enforce the current to go
The switch-on event of the control MOSFET occurs every through the external Schottky diode Dl. The emission
1 s and excites ringing in the power IC at frequencies of spectrum of the DC-DC converter circuits is shown in
185 MHz and 850 MHz. The 185MHz component is Figure 8. The higher the DC biased voltage, the lower the
caused by the MOSFET drain-source capacitance and emission at 850 MHz.
parasitic loop inductances. The observation of the
emission profile and switching output waveform of the
buck converters shows that the 850 MHz causing event is
a result of the reverse recovery of the body diode
associated with the synchronous MOSFET [7].
Fig. 6. Switching output with

integrated Schottky contact.
Fig. 8. Far field emissions
under different biase voltages.
Reverse recover current has multiple negative effects: It 4 Conclusions

is a source of radiated emission; further, it reduces the To adequately characterize the interference potential of a
efficiency of the DC-DC buck converter. Designers have synchronous DC-DC buck converter it is necessary to
been trying to implement new techniques to mitigate the correlate the time-domain behavior and emission spectrum
effects of the reverse recovery. components. JTFA enables significant extra information to be
The radiated emission spectrum of a similar converter with gained over the conventional method. Reverse recovery not
the new power IC is shown in Figure 9. The 850 MHz only reduces the power efficiency of the buck converter, but
emissions are drastically reduced. also releases the energy in the form of the electromagnetic
field and increase the noise level of the synchronous DC-DC
buck converters. The technique with monolithically
integrated Schottky diodes is introduced for reducing the
reverse recovery and its related EMI radiation.
References:
[1] C. Kraft, Conducted noise from 48 volt DC-DC
converters used in telecommunications systems and
its mitigation for EMC, Telecommunications Energy
Special, 2000 pp. 327 331.
[2] R. P. Stratford, Analysis and Control of Harmonic
Fig. 9. Far field emissions with Current in Systems with Static Power Converters,
integrated Schottky contact. IEEE Trans. Industry Applications, Vol. IA-17, No. [3] M.H.
Nagrial, A. Hellany, EMI/EMC issues in switch mode
The Figure 9 displays the MOSFET of the switching power supplies (SMPS), Electromagnetic Compatibility,
output waveform. The 850 MHz event used to be present 2001, pp. 180 -185.
after the rising edge of the control MOSFET turn-on is [4] D. J. Pileggi, N. H. Chandra, Prediction of
obviously removed. Harmonic Voltages in Distribution Systems, IEEE
Trans, on Power Apparatus and Systems, Vol.
PAS-100, No. 3, 2002, pp. 1307-1315.
[5] S. Qian, D. Chen, Joint time-frequency analysis, Signal
Processing Magazine, IEEE, Vol. Issue: 2, 2002.
[6] M. Pavier, A. Sawle, High frequency DC/DC power
conversion: The influence of package parasitics,
APEC 2003.
[7] T. Tolle, T. Duerbaum, R. Elferich, Switching loss
Contributions of synchronous rectifiers in VRM
applications, Power Electronics Specialist, 2003, vol.
Fig. 10. Switching output 1, pp. 144 149.
integrated Schottky contact. [8] Y. C. Liang, R. Oruganti, Design considerations of power
MOSFET for high frequency synchronous rectification,
The Figure 10 shows the STFFT of the switching output
IEEE Trans. Power Electronics, Vol 10, No. 3, 2004,
waveform. The 850 MHz event used to be present after
pp. 388 395.
the rising edge of the control MOSFET turn-on is
obviously removed.

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Proceedings of the 7th WSEAS International Conference on Power Systems, Beijing, China, September 15-17, 2007 232

EMI Problems associated with DC-DC Converters

1 Introduction eliminate predominant harmonics present in the input current

2) After the main control MOSFET switches off, the

Fig. 1. Typical synchronous DC-DC

Fig. 4. The near field spectrum

The STFFT [6] works same as conventional Fourier 3 Problem Solution

Fig. 5. The domain in waveform.

Fig. 6. Switching output with

Reverse recover current has multiple negative effects: It 4 Conclusions

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