Analysis and design of dynamic voltage regulation in multiphase buck converter

Dynamic voltage regulation (DVR) [1] is now widely used in microprocessors and system on chip (SOC) systems to reduce operational voltage under light load condition. With the aggressive motivation to reduce power consumption, the design specification of voltage transition (dv/dt) for the DVR is pushing the limit of the multiphase converter design and the component stress as well. In this paper, a novel control scheme is proposed for dealing with fast voltage positioning, i.e. upward and downward. The scenario of reverse current flowing is carefully studied based on the MOSFET parasitic model and experiment results. The stress on the HS MOSFET is also addressed. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is verified by both simulation and experiment result.