An NMOS-LDO Regulated Switched-Capacitor DC–DC Converter With Fast-Response Adaptive-Phase Digital Control

A fully integrated low-dropout-regulated step-down multiphase-switched-capacitor DC-DC converter (a.k.a. charge pump, CP) with a fast-response adaptive-phase (Fast-RAP) digital controller is designed using a 65-nm CMOS process. Different from conventional designs, a low-dropout regulator (LDO) with an NMOS power stage is used without the need for an additional stepup CP for driving. A clock tripler and a pulse divider are proposed to enable the Fast-RAP control. As the Fast-RAP digital controller is designed to be able to respond faster than the cascaded linear regulator, transient response will not be affected by the adaptive scheme. Thus, light-load efficiency is improved without sacrificing the response time. When the CP operates at 90 MHz with 80.3% CP efficiency, only small ripples would appear on the CP output with the 18-phase interleaving scheme, and be further attenuated at VOUT by the 50-mV dropout regulator with only 4.1% efficiency overhead and 6.5% area overhead. The output ripple is less than 2 mV for a load current of 20 mA.