Design of a Self-Oscillating PWM Signal Generator With a Double Integration Loop

A novel digital self-oscillating pulse width modulation (PWM) signal generator with a hysteresis comparator is proposed in this study. The proposed generator, referred to as a “2nd-order PWM signal generator” in this paper, utilizes a double integration loop based upon the concept of delta-sigma modulation for precise conversion. A simple 2nd-order PWM signal generator was initially investigated, but it was found to exhibit impractical behavior: the period of the PWM output signal increased slowly with time. An analysis of the limit cycle state of this simple generator using describing function theory shows that the amplitude of the limit cycle is extremely large. Proportional integral (PI) compensation is therefore used to adjust the limit cycle state by varying the proportional gain and the coefficient of the integral. The use of PI compensation suppresses the amplitude of the limit cycle, thus making the 2nd-order PWM signal generator practical. An analysis of this modified generator reveals that the period of the PWM signal can be controlled by the hysteresis width of the comparator and by the proportional gain. As a test case, a switching frequency of 300 kHz is used for the performance evaluation of the proposed PWM signal generator with a sampling frequency of 12.5 MHz. A noise-shaped output is obtained, and a high-precision, ultra-low-distortion PWM signal with a high effective duty cycle resolution is achieved.