TransSiP PI: The Secret of Getting the Most Out of Your System

The Importance of System Efficiency

Engineers are coming up with exciting, innovative ways to use harvestable energy alongside batteries to power remote or mobile electronics.  The crucial step is to transform the energy acquired into a power source that is genuinely useful to the system being powered.  This means addressing the significant issue of: System Efficiency.

System efficiency is not just about the challenges of DC-DC power conversion, but also ensuring the quality of the power supply bias of the system being powered. Higher signal quality, sensitivity, accuracy, and reliability are all become possible with a good power supply bias, one that provides Power Integrity or PI.  A system with a poor-quality power supply is much less efficient and consumes much more energy on high-power activities.  The efficiency of the system decreases as more error corrections and iterations occur in the processor run time - setting performance against battery life.  A low-quality power supply bias means a decreased system efficiency, poor performance, battery life, and most significantly for users – Poor User Experience.

Let’s look at some examples.  Why don't advanced smartwatches and sports watches match the accuracy of a basic chest strap?  It is because the arterial pulses being sensed by the optical cardio monitors create signal variations of approximately 0.086dB or less - a tiny shift highly susceptible to power supply noise interference. Also, why does a GPS sports watch needs so long to determine its position?  Or, why do smartphones have a high rate of returning hundreds if not thousands of meters off, when locating someone?  The "Find My Friend" app's user experience is one example of a problematic interaction.  Key to resolving this problem that affects our daily lives is Power Integrity.

Summary:

• TransSiP PI noise reduction technology enables a high-quality DC power source

• System Efficiency is not only about issues of DC-DC power conversion but also the quality of the power supply bias of the system being powered.

• Higher signal quality, sensitivity, accuracy, and reliability are all possible with a good power supply bias.

• In comparison, a system with a poor-quality power supply is much less efficient, consuming more energy on high-power activities.

• The efficiency of the system decreases as more error corrections and iterations occur in the processor run time - a concern of performance versus battery life.

• A low-quality power supply bias means a decreased system efficiency which will be substantially disadvantageous to performance, battery life, and most significantly for users - User Experience.

• The patented TransSiP PI noise reduction technology helps overcome these power supply issues and enables better system efficiency.

A Groundbreaking Discovery Empowering All Electronics

To understand our product, you have to first understand a critical problem in digital technology known as signal noise. When computers and systems process signals, massive amounts of data with minuscule variations, having noise is like trying to speed up a car without aerodynamic design – it is congested, unstable, and wastes precious energy.

The Problems of DC-DC Power Conversion

Noise-sensitive applications, such as location-based services, biomedical monitoring, wireless communication, homeland security, data storage, computing, and many others, require constant supply voltages that are free of noise and other disturbances.  However, converting the source voltage into a clean, stable supply bias for noise-sensitive applications is challenging from the get-go.

Currently, two techniques are prevalent in the process of DC-DC conversion.  Switching mode employs digital switches to offer the best efficiency, resulting in the least waste of limited battery capacity or precious harvested energy.  However, switching mode and energy harvesting power supplies (SMPS) generate a very noisy supply bias.  The problem will worsen as the switching noise changes phase, coined as Switching Noise Jitter (SNJ) – which becomes a dominant noise under weak signal conditions.  The alternative, linear DC regulation, offers a relatively cleaner power supply but at the expense of efficiency.  The problem will get worse as on-chip operating voltages decrease since linear conversion is based on the source-to-supply bias ratio.  Furthermore, simultaneous switching noise (SSN), generally referred to as ground-bounce, increases with I/O activities even with linear DC regulation, which makes conventional filters ineffective in eliminating the noise.

Lowered operating voltages make a system much more vulnerable to power supply noise.  At the same time, the power-saving duty cycles create transient noise, which makes the power supply noise even more chaotic.  Therefore, system development has been accompanied by increasing complexity in power management design and filter strategies in attempts to minimize the noise footprint.  But the Irvine-based, TransSIP has found that, in spite of sophisticated filtering, problems continue to arise.

Summary:

• Switching mode and energy harvesting power supplies (SMPS) generate a very noisy supply bias

• Linear DC regulation provides a relatively cleaner power supply but at the cost of much lower efficiency

• The efficiency of linear DC regulation will get worst with the shrinkage of semiconductor geometries and operating voltages

• Simultaneous switching noise (SSN) increases with I/O activities making conventional filters ineffective in eliminating the noise

• Transient noise due to power-saving duty cycles makes power supply noise even more chaotic

• Power management design and filter strategies are complex and may not be completely effective

• TransSIP has found that, despite sophisticated filtering, noise always remains an issue

What is Switching Noise Jitter and why should we care

Switching Noise Jitter, or SNJ, is a previously unrecognized time-domain form of noise found on top of frequency-domain phenomena such as power spectral density, ripple, and harmonics of a switching mode power supply.  SNJ is the dominant noise detrimental to signal integrity during weak signal conditions.

TransSiP discovered the SNJ noise component during research into sources of instability of GPS systems.  Undetectable using conventional frequency-domain analysis, TransSiP turned to a real-time spectral histogram analysis from Tektronix.  SNJ is a “noise on the noise” but it changes phase on top of the frequency-domain noise of a switching mode power supply.  So SNJ is the occurrences of “noise” moving in time. 

The discovery enabled the development of a novel circuit topology for filtering this "noise on the noise".  It is evident that digital systems run much more efficiently under weak real-world signal conditions without SNJ in the power supply bias.

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