Cascade controller with sliding-mode-voltage and current-mode for monolithic high frequency DC–DC converters

Modern control theories such as fuzzy control, sliding-mode control, optimal control, neural network control have been widely used in discrete-switching DC–DC converters, While they are seldom used in monolithic integration. Under parameter variation, large supply and load disturbance, high slew-rate current transient, high nonlinearity in today and future power management integrated circuits, linear control theories used in traditional monolithic DC–DC converters cannot satisfy required performance, which make it stringent to use modern control theories in monolithic DC–DC converters. This paper proposes cascade controller which consists of PWM based sliding-mode-voltage control and current-mode control for high frequency DC–DC converters. As long as the dynamic responses of the inner current loop are much faster than the outer sliding-mode-voltage loop, inner and outer loops operate in cascade-mode functionally. This work leads to an easy-to-follow design procedure to design control coefficients. To illustrate the feasibility of the scheme, a monolithic 100 MHz boost DC–DC converter using cascade controller with sliding-mode-voltage and current-mode is designed in SMIC 0.18 μm CMOS process. Several simulations are performed to validate the functionalities of the controller.