Power Electronics Technology December 2007 www.powerelectronics.

com
6
C
ompensation of switching power supplies is an
essential element of proper and robust power
design. The recent introduction of digital pulse-
width modulation (PWM) controllers has introduced the
concept of using a digital proportional-integral-derivative
(PID) lter for the voltage-loop compensation rather than
a traditional Type III analog implementation.
Digital PID lters have programmable coefcients to
control the relative contributions of the error signal, the
integral of the error signal and the derivative of the feed-
back error signal. Designers who typically move poles and
zeros to achieve compensation may struggle with relating
these nonintuitive digital PID parameters to what they
observe on Bode plots.
The nonintuitive nature of digital compensation can
be overcome by working with a new set of PID lter coef-
An Analog-Friendly Approach
Simplies Digital Compensation
A new, intuitive set of PID lter coefcients enables designers to compensate a voltage-
mode, digital PWM controller quickly using Bode plot measurements or a simulation
tool that automatically optimizes compensation.
By Chris Young, Chief Technical Ofcer, Zilker Labs, Austin, Texas
cients that are expressed as gain, Q and frequency terms.
These new, more-intuitive coefcients were developed by
analyzing a digital compensator in the analog domain.
Designers can use the new coefcients to compensate
a digitally controlled power converter visually using a
network analyzer.
In so doing, designers can take advantage of the digital
PID lters unique ability to compensate output lters that
have high Q. The process of optimizing compensation can
be sped up further by using a simulation tool that auto-
matically calculates optimum PID lter coefcients.
Analog Compensation
A simplied power converter is illustrated in Fig. 1.
The converter consists of a PWM controller with a xed
modulation gain (G
FIX
), high-side and low-side switches,
an output stage consisting of an inductor and one or more
capacitors, a load, and a feedback or control loop. In this
case, the feedback control is shown as a Type III amplier,
but could be any feedback controller. The purpose of the
control loop is to compare the output to a known reference
(V
REF
) and adjust the PWM signal to correct for differences
between the output and the reference.
A robust, practical power system maintains stability in
the presence of disturbances such as input-voltage changes,
load changes and even temperature changes. The stability
of a system can be characterized in terms of how closely
the gain through the feedback path approaches a gain of
-1, under the conditions of interest. Because the feedback
has both a magnitude component and a phase component
relative to the output, stability can be expressed in terms
of gain margin and phase margin. The gain margin is a
measure of how close the gain magnitude is relative to
unity when the phase is 180 degrees. The phase margin
is how close the phase is relative to 180 degrees when the
gain is unity.
v
0bT
v
h
FVl

FX
= \
h
\
SkV
v
REF
Tye
amlilier
L
C
R
C
R
0bT
d
1d
Fig. 1. In this simplied power converter, the feedback control is
represented as a Type III amplier.
Digital POWer
7
www.powerelectronics.com Power Electronics Technology December 2007
Both the phase and gain margins can be determined
from either a Nyquist diagram or a Bode plot. Because
the Bode plot has an easily read frequency scale, it is a
convenient tool and will be used here.
Without feedback, the simplied transfer function of
the system in Fig. 1 is given by:
G G
s
s Q s
PID FIX
ESR
N N
=
+
+ +
1
1
2 2
( )
( ) ( )
,

where
ESR
is the location of the zero due to the ESR
of the output capacitor,
N
is the natural frequency of
the output stage and Q is the quality factor of the output
stage.
For the purpose of this discussion, the contribution of
the zero determined by the ESR of the capacitor will be
ignored, and the focus will be on poles of the remainder
of the transfer function (G
S
):
G G
s Q s
S FIX
N N
=
+ +
1
1
2 2
( ) ( )
.

This equation has two poles. For Q < 0.5 (damped case),
both poles are real; for Q > 0.5 (underdamped case), the
poles are complex conjugates.
As the sum of the last two terms in the denominator
approach -1, the denominator approaches zero and the
transfer function (and, thus, the entire system) becomes
unstable. Compensation is the process of adding feedback
to the system to adjust the response so that the transfer
function remains stable. In this case, feedback is added,
which provides zeros to compensate for the poles of the
power converters transfer function.
In the Type III analog approach using discrete re-
sistors and capacitors, only real zeros are available for
compensating the power converters transfer function.
The challenge for compensation using the typical analog
Type III approach is that, for high-Q applications, the
power-converter poles are complex. Trying to match real
zeros to complex power-converter poles can be nearly
impossible, and may ultimately result in a less-than-ideal
performance.
Digital Compensation
While digital control offers the ability to introduce
sophisticated compensation schemes, the focus here will
be on a simple digital PID lter (Fig. 2). This digital lter
takes the error signal, sums the scaled signal with scaled
delayed samples of the error signal, plus the integrated
output to implement the compensator. Three gain coef-
cients are used to tune this compensator.
In the s domain, this lter has a transfer function
given by:
G
A Be Ce
e e
PID
sT sT
sT sT
=
+ +

2
1 ( )
,
where A, B and C are the gain coefcients for the various
taps. The rst term in the denominator is the delay in the
signal path, the second term in the denominator is the ac-
cumulator at the output of the summing stage and T is the
period of the (inverse of the switching frequency) PWM.
Fig. 2. In this PID lter, the gain coefcients for G
A
, G
B
and G
C
can be
combined to represent the gain, Q and frequency of the simplied
power converters output stage.
Fig. 3. The Bode plot for the simplied power converter in Fig. 1 allows
the gain and phase margins for a specic set of gain coefcients to
be evaluated.
O.1 1 1O 1OO
4O
2O
O
2O
4O
Frequency (kh/)
M
a
q
n
i
t
u
d
e

(
d
B
)
2O dB
8 dB
Fig. 4. The Q values for a power converters output stage can be
obtained from the characteristics of the gain curve.
nut

0utut

C
x(n1)
x(n2)
+
+
+
+

O.1 1 1O 1OO
2O
O
2O
4O
M
a
q
n
i
t
u
d
e

(
d
B
)
0=1O
0=1
0=O.4
Frequency (kh/)
O.1 1 1O 1OO
O
5O
1OO
15O
2OO
Frequency (kh/)
R
e
l
a
t
i
v
e

h
a
s
e

(
d
e
q
r
e
e
s
)
45
0=1O
0=1
0=O.4
Power Electronics Technology December 2007 www.powerelectronics.com
8
This compensator is seen to have two zeros, a pole at
zero and a pole at innity. The two zeros are available to
compensate for the two poles in the output stage of the
power converter. These zeros arise as solutions to the
quadratic equation in the numerator.
As such, depending on the values of A, B and C, there
can be two real zeros or a pair of complex-conjugate zeros.
Therefore, the digital PID compensator gives not only the
same real zeros as a Type III analog compensator, but also
complex zeros, which are more suitable for compensating
complex poles.
Using pole-zero matching, the A, B and C coefcients
can be combined into a gain term, G
C
, a Q term, Q
C
, and a
frequency term, f
C
, to facilitate matching the correspond-
ing characteristics of the output stage. Once the transfer
function of the digital compensator is realized in terms of
G
C
, Q
C
and f
C
, a visual method can be used to compensate
the power converter.
Power Converter Characteristics
In Fig. 3, the Bode plot of this equation, with G
FIX
equal
to 5 and
N
equal to 16 kHz, is shown for the Q values of
10, 1 and 0.4. In this plot, the phase is shown relative to
180 degrees, so that phase margin can be read directly by
observing the phase curves value at the frequency where
the gain is unity. A typical minimum acceptable phase
margin is 45 degrees. This level is indicated by the dotted
line on the phase graph.
The unity-gain (0 dB) crossover frequency for all three
cases ranges from 30 kHz to 40 kHz. As can be readily seen,
the phase margin for the high-Q (> 0.5, underdamped)
cases are below the 45-degree limit. Because of the mar-
ginal or even unacceptable phase margins for this power
converter, compensation is needed to adjust the system
response to a more stable condition.
The power converter can be observed and character-
ized using a network analyzer to generate the Bode plot. In
high-Q systems, the resonant peak in the power converter
can be readily identied. The characteristic frequency is
determined by observing where the peak of the resonance
occurs along the frequency axis.
The value for Q can be determined from the height
(or depression) of the resonant (or anti-resonant) point
(Fig. 4). The low-frequency asymptote denes a reference
value for gain. The intersection of the low-frequency
asymptote and the high-frequency asymptote occurs at
the reference frequency. The Q value (in decibels) that
produces each curve is found by taking the difference
between the value of the curve at the reference frequency
and the reference value for gain. In the cases illustrated
in Fig. 4, a Q of 10 appears as a 20-dB peak and a Q of 0.4
appears as a depression of -8 dB.
Figuring the Results
As an example, take the situation where the power
converters output lter Q value is 8 and the resonant fre-
quency is 23.17 kHz. The left graph in Fig. 5 shows what
would be seen on a network analyzer if the compensator
were not matched to the power converter. In this case, the
compensator has been set to a Q value of 3 and a resonant
frequency of 1 kHz.
The rst step in the process is to identify the power-
Fig. 5. The process of tuning an unmatched compensator (left frame) to the output lter of a power converter rst involves matching the
frequency response (center frame), and then nally selecting the correct value for Q to achieve the optimal response.
Fig. 6. This PID compensation simulation tool computes optimized
values for G
C
, Q
C
, and f
C
in real time, based on user-supplied circuit
parameters and the users target values for gain margin, phase
margin and crossover frequency.
Digital POWer
www.powerelectronics.com Power Electronics Technology December 2007
9
converter characteristic frequency and Q. The peak can be
seen to be at 23 kHz (agreeing with the established value).
The peak looks to be roughly 20 dB in height. A resonant
peak of 20 dB is equivalent to a Q of 10.
The next step is to reposition the compensator fre-
quency and Q value to align with the power converter.
Using the new values for the compensator frequency and
Q, new values of A, B and C are computed and the lter
response is updated to reect the inuence of the new
values for these gain coefcients. The updated response is
shown in the middle graph in Fig. 5. Although the phase
margin (77 degrees) and gain margin (19 dB) are more
than adequate in terms of compensation, it does appear
from the dip in the magnitude line of the Bode plot at
23 kHz that the new compensator has too much Q (lead-
ing to anti-resonance).
A methodical reduction in the compensators Q value
will reveal that a Q of 8 provides a nearly ideal response.
These results are shown in the Bode plot in the right
frame of Fig. 5. Therefore, the new values represent a
nearly perfect solution for the compensation.
As an aside, it is interesting to take a look at the origi-
nal coefcients A, B and C and compare them to the nal
coefcients. Originally, A, B and C were 166606, -332300
and 165736, respectively. The nal values are 325, -594
and 310, respectively. Without the visual information
provided by the Bode plots and the translation of the
PID coefcients into gain, Q and frequency, it would have
been difcult to intuitively perceive that the changes in
the coefcients would produce the desired results.
Model-Based Solutions
If the power-converter model is adequately character-
ized in terms of discrete components, then the optimal
compensation terms can be rapidly generated using opti-
mization software. Fig. 6 shows a software tool, CompZL,
that performs this function.
In this tool, once the model is entered, the target values
for gain margin, phase margin and crossover frequency
are entered. When the optimize button is activated,
the software computes the values for G
C
, Q
C
and f
C
, and
provides the closest t to the target margin values dened
by the design goals.
The advantage of a model-based compensation tool is
that parameters can be varied to simulate real-world varia-
tions in order to explore the sensitivity of the compensa-
tion network. In addition, such a software tool allows easy
conversion from G
C
, Q
C
and f
C
into A, B and C for the
purpose of quickly reconguring the digital lter.
Transformation of the PID coefcients from their in-
trinsic values representing proportions of error, integral,
and differential contributions to values representing gain,
Q and frequency make visual compensation adjustment
both useful and edifying. PETech
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