High-Efficiency Low-Voltage DC-DC Conversion for Portable Applications

Anthony John Stratakos, 1998, Ph.D. (advisor: Bob Brodersen)

Motivated by emerging portable applications that demand ultra-low-power hardware to maximize battery run-time, high-efficiency low-voltage DC-DC conversion is presented as a key low-power enabler. Recent innovations in low-power digital CMOS design have assumed that the supply voltage is a free variable and can be set to any arbitrarily low level with little penalty. This thesis introduces and demonstrates an array of DC-DC converter design techniques which make this assumption more viable.