Texas Instruments Incorporated Power Management

Linear versus switching regulators in

industrial applications with a 24-V bus
By Rich Nowakowski, Product Marketing Manager, Power Management Group,
and Robert Taylor, Applications Engineer and Member, Group Technical Staff

Figure 1. Switching (buck) converter with integrated MOSFETs

C2 0.01 µF
L1
U1 100 µH TP3
24VIN TPS54061DRB
TP1 1 8
J1 BOOT PH J2
24VIN 1 2 7 1
VIN GND R3 5 V at 100 mA
2 3 6 53.6 kΩ 2
GND EN
PWPD
COMP GND
4 5 C5
RT/CLK VSNS
4.7 µF
R2
9 24.9 kΩ R4
C1 R1 10.2 kΩ
1 µF 301 kΩ C4
22 pF

TP2 C3 TP4
0.022 µF

Linear regulators have been around for many

Figure 2. Integrated, wide-input-voltage linear regulator
years. Some designers still use linear regulators
that are over 20 years old for new and old proj-
ects. Others have made their own linear regula- 24VIN TP5 U2 TP7
J3 LM317 J4
tors from discrete components. The simplicity 1 3 4 1
24VIN IN OUT 5 V at 100 mA
of a linear regulator is hard to beat for a wide 2 2 2
OUT GND
range of voltage conversions. However, low- GND 1
GND/ADJ
C10
current applications with a 24-V bus, such as for R5
243 Ω 4.7 µF
C6
industrial automation or HVAC controls, may
1 µF
have thermal issues if the voltage drop is too R6
large. Fortunately, designers have several TP6 732 Ω TP8
choices now that small, high-efficiency, wide-
input-voltage switching regulators are available.
This article compares three different solu-
tions that provide a 5-V output at 100 mA from
a 24-V bus. A synchronous step-down (buck) converter is circuits shown in Figures 1, 2, and 3 are all built on the
compared to an integrated linear regulator and a discrete same circuit board and use 1-µF input and 4.7-µF output
linear regulator. Size, efficiency, thermal performance, ceramic capacitors with the same ratings.
transient response, noise, complexity, and cost are com- The design in Figure 1 uses a synchronous buck con-
pared to help designers choose the solution that best verter with integrated MOSFETs, the TPS54061 from
meets the constraints of a particular application. Texas Instruments (TI). Note that this circuit does not
require a catch diode but includes an inductor, five capaci-
Conditions of comparison tors, and four resistors. The device also employs external
Most industrial applications use a 24-V bus and require 5 V compensation and is tuned to use the same input and out-
to power various loads, such as logic and low-current put capacitors as the linear circuits in Figures 2 and 3.
micro­processors. An output current of 100 mA is chosen The design in Figure 2 uses an integrated, wide-input-
because it accommodates many logic and processor loads. voltage linear regulator, TI’s LM317, which is a popular,
However, the power-dissipation level can affect the deci- industry-standard regulator with a 1.5-A output capability.
sion of whether to use a switching or linear regulator. The This circuit uses two external resistors and two external

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 Power Management Texas Instruments Incorporated

capacitors. The wide difference

Figure 3. Discrete linear regulator
between the input and output
voltages requires the low thermal
resistance of a double-decawatt 24VIN Q1
J5 TP9
package (DDPak). 1
R8 R9 R10
4
BCP54TA TP11 J6
24VIN
Figure 3 shows a discrete linear 2 51 Ω 51 Ω 51 Ω
2 3 1
5 V at 100 mA
regulator that employs a transistor GND
R7
2
GND
and a Zener diode with two exter- C7
4.99 kΩ 1
C8
nal capacitors and four external 1 µF 4.7 µF
D1
resistors. The Zener diode breaks TP10
5.6 V
TP12
down at 5.6 V, and that voltage is
fed to the base of an NPN transis-
tor. Due to the base-emitter voltage
drop, the output is regulated to
~5 V. The external resistors are
used to help with the power dissipation Table 1. Summary of board area and component count
in the NPN transistor. BOARD AREA NUMBER OF
Table 1 summarizes the board area and REGULATOR TYPE (in2) COMPONENTS COMPLEXITY
component count of each design.
Switching (Buck) (TPS54061) 0.14 11 High
Linear-regulator solutions require more
board area to provide proper thermal Integrated Linear (LM317) 2.25 5 Low
relief on the circuit board. At full load, Discrete Linear (Zener/Transistor) 2.25 8 Medium
each linear-regulator solution must dissi-
pate about 2 W. As a rule of thumb,
approximately 1 W of dissipation in 1 in2 Table 2. Summary of thermal performance
of board area results in a 100°C tempera-
TEMPERATURE MAXIMUM
ture rise. The linear-regulator solutions RISE TEMPERATURE
are designed to allow for a 40°C tempera- REGULATOR TYPE (°C) (°C) PACKAGE
ture rise. The synchronous buck converter
Switching 11 40.7 3×3-mm VSON
is clearly the design of choice when board
area is limited, despite the number of Integrated Linear 27 56.2 DDPak
external components and the design effort Discrete Linear 40 69.1 SOT-23, SOT223
required to compensate the feedback loop
and select the inductor.
Thermal performance Figure 4. Heat generated from each circuit (white indicates
The thermal image in Figure 4 shows the tem- highest temperature)
perature rise of each design on the circuit
board. The board is designed in a manner such
Switching Regulator
that none of the circuits disturb the thermal 30.5°C min, 40.7°C max 66.4°C
performance of an adjacent circuit. Table 2
shows that the switching regulator has the low-
est temperature rise, at 11°C. With a large dif-
ference between the input and output voltages,
the switching regulator with synchronous rectifi- Linear Regulator
cation excels in efficiency compared to either 31.4°C min, 56.2°C max

Discrete Linear Regulator

30.6°C min, 69.1°C max

19.4°C

10

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Texas Instruments Incorporated Power Management

Table 3. Summary of efficiency and power loss

MAXIMUM LOAD NO LOAD
EFFICIENCY POWER LOSS QUIESCENT CURRENT
REGULATOR TYPE (%) (W) (mA)
Switching 84.5 0.093 0.5
Integrated Linear 20.0 2.06 5.5
Discrete Linear 20.1 2.02 4

linear circuit. (See Table 3.) It is interesting to

Figure 5. Efficiency versus load current
note that the temperature rise of the inte-
grated linear circuit is different from that of
the discrete linear circuit. Since the integrated 90
linear regulator’s package (DDPak) is larger,
80
its dissipated heat is spread over more area.
TPS54061
The discrete linear circuit using the SOT-23 70
and SOT223 packages is smaller than the
60
DDPak and has a higher package power-
Efficiency (%)

dissipation rating, which makes dissipating 50

the heat more difficult.
40
Efficiency comparison 30
The thermal performance is directly related to Discrete Linear
the efficiency of each regulator. Figure 5 shows 20 X X X X X X X X
X
an efficiency comparison of all three circuits. 10
LM317
As expected, the switching regulator excels at
both light-load and full-load efficiency. At light 0
loads, switching losses and quiescent-current 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
losses become more pronounced, which Load Current (mA)
explains the reduced efficiency at lighter loads.
At light loads, it is better to view the power-
loss graph (Figure 6) than the efficiency graph,
since a 50% difference in efficiency at 10 mA Figure 6. Power loss versus load current
seems like a large margin. However, the
amount of current consumed by the load is 2.0
small. When the input voltage is 24 V and the
1.8 X
output current is 10 mA, the power loss of the
switching regulator is 2.8 mW, and the loss of 1.6 X
the integrated linear regulator is 345 mW. At X
1.4
full load, the measured power dissipated is
Power Loss ( W)

X
0.093 W for the switching regulator versus 1.2
LM317
2.06 W for the linear regulator, which shows a 1.0
X
wide margin and a drastic improvement. X Discrete Linear
0.8
Table 3 summarizes the efficiency and power X
loss of all three circuits. Note that the quies- 0.6
X
cent current of the discrete linear circuit is 0.4
lower than that of the integrated linear circuit. X
The integrated linear regulator has more power- 0.2 TPS54061
X
consuming internal circuitry and incorporates 0
more features than the discrete linear circuit. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Load Current (mA)

11

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 Power Management Texas Instruments Incorporated

Output-voltage characteristics Figure 7. Switching regulator during load transient

Analog circuits may be sensitive to voltage
ripple, and digital processors may be sensitive
to the accuracy of the core voltage. It is impor-
tant to check the power supply’s voltage ripple,
Output Voltage (AC, 200 mV/div)
voltage-regulation accuracy, and voltage-peak
deviations during load transients. Linear regula-
tors inherently have low ripple and are used to 3
remove noise from switching regulators. The
voltage ripple of both the integrated and the
discrete linear-regulator circuits under maxi-
mum load is under 10 mV. When expressed as a Load Current (100 mA/div)
percentage of the output voltage, accuracy is
better than 0.2%. On the other hand, the volt- 4
age ripple of the switching regulator is 75 mV, or
1.5% of the output voltage. The low equivalent
Time (1 ms/div)
series resistance of the switching regulator’s
ceramic output capacitor allows for the circuit’s
low ripple, despite the switching regulator’s
inherent noise.
Comparing the output-voltage accuracy of the Figure 8. Integrated linear regulator during load transient
switching and linear regulators from no load to
full load shows that the switching regulator has
better performance. Further inspection of the
product specification tables reveals that the ref-
erence voltage of the switching regulator is the
most accurate of the three circuits. The switch-
Output Voltage (AC, 200 mV/div)
ing regulator is a relatively new integrated 3
circuit, and DC/DC converters are trending
towards higher reference-voltage accuracies.
The discrete linear circuit, which uses a simpler
Load Current (100 mA/div)
method for regulating the output voltage, has
the worst performance. In many cases, applica-
tions do not need high voltage accuracy since 4
the 5-V output may be postregulated.
The load-transient plots can be seen in Time (1 ms/div)
Figures 7 through 9. Although the switching
regulator has high output-voltage accuracy, its
measured peak-to-peak voltage during a load
transient is not as competitive as that of the lin-
Figure 9. Discrete linear regulator during load transient
ear circuits. The switching regulator’s measured
peak-to-peak voltage during a 50- to 100-mA
load step is 250 mV, or 5% of the output volt-
age, compared to 40 mV for the linear circuits.
Additional output capacitance can be added to
the switching regulator to reduce the voltage
peaks, but with penalties in cost and size. Note Output Voltage (AC, 50 mV/div)
that the discrete linear circuit is not designed to 3
attempt recovery of the output voltage during a
load transient. Also, the simplicity of the circuit
does not allow for current limiting or thermal-
Load Current (100 mA/div)
shutdown protection!

Time (1 ms/div)

12

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Texas Instruments Incorporated Power Management

Table 4 summarizes the output-voltage characteristics of offers drastic improvements in efficiency and board space
the three regulator designs. compared to either linear circuit. If a design must have the
absolute lowest cost, a discrete linear circuit can help, but
Cost comparison the trade-off is worse performance with potential penal-
Most of the external components used in these circuits are ties, such as the additional cost of heat sinking and the
small, passive resistors and capacitors that cost well below lack of protection features.
$0.01. The highest-cost component of the three circuits is Table 6 summarizes the characteristics of all three regu-
the silicon. Costs for all three bills of materials (BOMs), lator designs to aid the designer in choosing the best solu-
shown in Table 5, were collected from U.S. distribution tion for a given application.
channels at 10,000-unit suggested resale pricing. As can
be seen, both linear-regulator solutions cost much less References
than the switching regulator. Unfortunately, the switching 1. “3-terminal adjustable regulator,” LM317 Datasheet.
regulator requires an external inductor, which can cost Available: www.ti.com/slvs044-aaj
about $0.10; but the improvement in efficiency and size 2. “Wide input 60V, 200mA synchronous step-down DC-DC
may be worth the additional cost. The cost difference converter with low IQ,” TPS54061 Datasheet. Available:
between the integrated and discrete linear circuits is only www.ti.com/slvsbb7-aaj
$0.06! The protection features alone may prove the value
of the integrated over the discrete linear regulator. Related Web sites
Power Management:
Conclusion
www.ti.com/power-aaj
There are many power-management solutions available to
designers, and the best solution depends on the particular www.ti.com/lm317-aaj
needs of the application. Power-management solutions that www.ti.com/tps54061-aaj
reduce energy consumption and save board space allow Subscribe to the AAJ:
designers to make their products more differentiated and www.ti.com/subscribe-aaj
attractive on the market. A synchronous buck converter

Table 4. Summary of output-voltage characteristics

OUTPUT TRANSIENT WITH REGULATION ERROR WITH
MAXIMUM 50- TO 100-mA LOAD STEP 0- TO 100-mA LOAD STEP
REGULATOR TYPE LOAD RIPPLE (mV) (mV) (mV)
Switching 75 250 1.5
Integrated Linear <10 40 0.7
Discrete Linear <10 40 21.8

Table 5. Summary of BOM cost

BOM COST AT 10-ku RESALE PRICE
REGULATOR TYPE (U.S. DOLLARS)
Switching 1.80
Integrated Linear 0.32
Discrete Linear 0.26

Table 6. Characteristics of 5-V/100-mA regulators with a 24-V input

FULL-LOAD
BOM COST AT 10-ku RESALE PRICE VOUT RIPPLE EFFICIENCY BOARD AREA
REGULATOR TYPE (U.S. DOLLARS) (mV) (%) (in2) COMPLEXITY
Switching 1.80 75 84.5 0.14 High
Integrated Linear 0.32 <10 20.0 2.25 Low
Discrete Linear 0.26 <10 20.1 2.25 Medium

13

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