
APPLICATION INFORMATION
Design Guide — Step-By-Step Design Procedure
Selecting the Switching Frequency
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This example details the design of a high frequency switching regulator design using ceramic output capacitors.
A few parameters must be known in order to start the design process. These parameters are typically determined
at the system level. For this example, we will start with the following known parameters:
Output Voltage
5.0 V
Transient Response 0 to 1.5A load step
ΔVout = 4%
Maximum Output Current
0.5 A
Input Voltage
34 V nom. 12V to 42 V
Output Voltage Ripple
1% of Vout
Start Input Voltage (rising VIN)
8.9 V
Stop Input Voltage (falling VIN)
7.9 V
The first step is to decide on a switching frequency for the regulator. Typically, the user will want to choose the
highest switching frequency possible since this will produce the smallest solution size. The high switching
frequency allows for lower valued inductors and smaller output capacitors compared to a power supply that
switches at a lower frequency. The switching frequency that can be selected is limited by the minimum on-time of
the internal power switch, the input voltage and the output voltage and the frequency shift limitation.
the lower value of the two equations. Switching frequencies higher than these values will result in pulse skipping
or the lack of overcurrent protection during a short circuit.
The typical minimum on time, tonmin, is 130 ns for the TPS54040. For this example, the output voltage is 5.0 V
and the maximum input voltage is 42 V, which allows for a maximum switch frequency up to 1012 kHz when
including the inductor resistance, on resistance and diode voltage in
Equation 12. To ensure overcurrent
runaway is not a concern during short circuits in your design use
Equation 13 or the solid curve in
Figure 41 to
determine the maximum switching frequency. With a maximum input voltage of 42 V, assuming a diode voltage
of 0.5 V, inductor resistance of 130m
, switch resistance of 400m, a current limit value of 0.94 A and a short
circuit output voltage of 0.1V. The maximum switching frequency is approximately 1055 kHz.
Choosing the lower of the two values and adding some margin a switching frequency of 700kHz is used. To
determine the timing resistance for a given switching frequency, use
Equation 11 or the curve in
Figure 39.
The switching frequency is set by resistor R3 shown in Figure 50. Figure 50. High Frequency, 5V Output Power Supply Design with Adjusted UVLO.
Copyright 2009, Texas Instruments Incorporated
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