How the Smart Hardware Engineer Can Easily Design Power Supplies: Mini Tutorial

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Most electronic systems require some sort of voltage conversion between the voltage of the energy supply and the voltage of the circuitry that needs to be powered. As batteries lose charge, the voltage will drop. Some DC-to-DC conversion can ensure that much more of the stored energy in the battery is used to power the circuitry. Also, for example, with a 110 V AC line, we cannot power a semiconductor such as a microcontroller directly. Since voltage converters, also named power supplies, are used in almost every electronic system, they have been optimized for different purposes over the years. Certainly, some of the usual targets for optimization are solution size, conversion efficiency, EMI, and cost.

This mini-tutorial gives an overview of the possibilities for power supply design. It addresses the basic and commonly used isolated and nonisolated power supply topologies along with their advantages and disadvantages. It also covers electromagnetic interference (EMI) and filtering considerations.