This fall, Ashok Bindra, editorial director and David Morrison, editor of Power Electronics Technology will travel to five conferences to chair and attend a multitude of technical sessions.

Our busy editors find the time to attend these conferences and interact with the engineering community because it ensures that Power Electronics Technology remains fresh, relevant and dynamic.

Power Electronics Technology is unique among other engineering publications because David and Ashok are both degreed engineers. They speak the same language and offer peer-to-peer credibility with our readers who are all 100% qualified design engineers. The Power Management industry is complex and fluid and whether teaching or attending workshops and conferences, David and Ashok know that making time for professional growth is an important part of creating excellent journalism.

As a direct result, the readers of Power Electronics Technology are more engaged, more interested and more excited by what they are reading in the pages of Power Electronics Technology than the broad-based design engineering publications. Most importantly, is it assures that your message will be read.

Along with the regular lineup in November, we are producing a supplement on Digital Power.
Digital power integrated circuit sales are expected to surge to nearly $800 million in five years.  
Digital Power Electronics holds huge promise for the design engineer, offering cost reductions and vast improvements in performance over analog techniques. However, the replacement of analog control and power management with advanced digital techniques will require design engineers to employ new approaches to power system design and architectures. These new approaches can introduce additional complexity to the design process. "Going digital," in comparison to using similar bandwidth analog components, will offer many challenges with great rewards to those designers who surmount the hurdles.

Serving this need, Power Electronics Technology  has continuously covered this topic as well as launched a microsite totally devoted to Digital Power (www.powerelectronics.com). However, the quest for more information from our readers has compelled our editors to create a special issue completely dedicated to Digital Power Technology.

Distributed to our entire audience of 40,000 design engineers and polybagged with our regular November issue, designers will use this special supplement to learn how to use new components, new design techniques and new tools that enable the use of digital power conversion and digital power management technologies in their next design.

If you are looking to establish your company as a leader in Digital Power Technology and assure your reach to a qualified audience of design engineers and power design professionals, then your sponsorship in this issue is a must.

Best Regards,

Judy Miller
Associate Publisher
212-204-4246

Cover Story: Thermal Management
Micro-Channel Cooling Technology for High Power-Density Modules
The rapid development of high-density power electronics has led to remarkably challenging thermal issues. Over the past several decades, transistor development has followed Moore's Law, which states that device sizes decrease exponentially over time. Because these smaller devices continue to dissipate finite quantities of energy, the heat flux from the chip surface has risen significantly, reaching the order of 500 W/cm 2. This level is beyond the capability of conventional heatsinks used for silicon-based devices, which can achieve only about 20 W/cm 2 while maintaining junction temperatures below 150°C. In this article, the authors discuss the development of novel technologies such as micro-channels for thermal management.

Power Management:
The Parametric Transformer Revisited

Power Management:
Digital Share Bus Simplifies Power Supply Design
Power supplies in servers, storage, and telecom systems use redundant topologies. This means that multiple supplies connected in parallel provide the system power. If one supply fails, the other supplies carry the burden, ensuring system power continues uninterruptedly. A dedicated bus, called the Share Bus, is used for power supplies to communicate with each other. It is required to ensure that power supplies contribute equally to powering the system. The traditional approach is to use an analog share bus, but many advantages can be realized by changing to a digital approach. This article explains the systems in which share buses are employed, issues they face, and the merits of moving to a digital solution.

CAD/CAE
Modeling Complex ICs with SPICE – No Cakewalk, but Doable
Today, many analog IC manufacturers provide software models in SPICE format. Historically, better capability was engineered into SPICE3 over SPICE2 for enabling greater accuracy with modeling primitives, which are used for assimilating complex components. In this article, the authors will explore how SPICE3 (with enhancements) utilizes its power with comparator and amplifier models, then expand that into sophisticated techniques for accommodating three complex ICs—the UCC2305 HID Lamp Controller and UCC2891 PWM Controller from Texas Instruments and the IR1150 PFC circuit from International Rectifier.

Power Design:
Bootstrap Feedback Linearizes Current Source
Adjustable current sources often exhibit a non-linear control characteristic, but the inclusion of bootstrap feedback provides an inherently linear control that works well at all levels of output current as described in this article.

Digital Signal Controllers Enable Advanced Power Supplies
Application flexibility and cost concerns are creating a demand for intelligent power-supply designs that support soft configuration in production and external control. These advanced power supplies require a digital power-conversion feedback loop. Recent advances in digital signal controllers (DSCs) with on-chip high performance peripherals targeting power conversion, coupled with their ease of use and affordability enable many more power conversion products to migrate to digital loop control. This article will explain concepts associated with using a DSC to implement digital loop control in switch-mode power supply (SMPS) designs.

In-System Power Supply Response Analysis Using a Digital Power Solution
In this article, the authors present a method for measuring the power stage frequency response and discuss how this capability can be exploited by the end equipment.

The Other Benefits of Digital Power
Several semiconductor suppliers offer digital power ICs as improved solutions over traditional analog approaches. In order to replace an existing analog power design, a digital power solution must perform equal to or better than the existing solution and offer key design advantages. Digital solutions can match or improve the efficiency, size and cost of analog implementations while providing many more benefits. This article discusses some of the lesser known benefits of digital power, which may help a designer to determine digital power offers the right solution for a given application.

System Identification, Another Feature of Digital Power
Typically, power supply designers can monitor the output voltage, output current, and error amp voltage. Sometimes, sense current can also be gauged. To know the actual transfer characteristics of the control loop, often referred to as system identification, the loop must be measured with a logic analyzer or similar capable piece of external equipment. However, a network analyzer adds significant equipment and labor costs to the typical design cycle. However, with the implementation of a digital controller, the designer has complete visibility into the entire control loop to measure frequency response in real time without the use of a network analyzer and communicated to a host system such as a typical PC.

Imagine having 30 years of Power Electronics Technology magazine at your fingertips! Now you can in one DVD with the History of Power Electronics!
Presenting the first-ever, historical look back at the last thirty years in the power electronics industry. This ground breaking DVD is a searchable database of articles and issue covers dating back to the launch of our magazine in 1975, then called Solid-State Power Conversion. Designed as a research tool for electronics engineers, the DVD offers you the evolution of the industry at your fingertips!

To order online, click here and fill out the online order form, or click here for a pdf.
Sponsored by
National Semiconductor

Using the power of our print content, we’ve redesigned PowerElectronics.com to offer electronics professionals a quick and easy-to-use resource for the latest information on the topics they need to know about. Our new Web site features a database of searchable articles on Discrete Semis, Power Management, Motor Power Management, Passives/Packaging, Thermal Management and Power Systems.

As an advertiser, PowerElectronics.com offers you new sponsorship opportunities to increase your company’s exposure, build brand awareness, and drive traffic to your company’s Web site. The new platform offers users and advertisers a superior site experience – greater search capabilities, detailed reporting of site usage and more flexible branding opportunities. Click here for more online marketing opportunities.

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