Campbell Collins demonstrates Ericsson converters

Ericsson's BMR453 and BMR454 are fully regulated quarter-brick and eighth-brick DC/DC converters capable of delivering up to 396W and 240W respectively.

Output voltages can be programmed from 8.1V to 13.2V, and the input voltage range is 36-75V.

Complementing the converters, the BMR450 and BMR451 are point-of-load regulators delivering 20A and 40A respectively.

The output voltage of these devices can be programmed from 0.6-5.5V for the BMR450 and 0.6-3.6V for the BMR451.

The input voltage range of these regulators is 4.5-14V.

All four of the product families utilise digital power management techniques, enabling full communication and control between individual devices and the customer's onboard host controller.

These functions are implemented using the industry standard, two-wire PMBus interface, which is compatible with I2C.

A further benefit of using digital power management is the increase in power density and efficiency over their analogue counterparts.

The BMR450 20A regulator, for example, has a footprint of 1 x 0.5in and delivers efficiency levels of up to 96.8 per cent.

Using the FAP 901 0755/2 digital evaluation board and associated silver edition GUI interface, Campbell Collins can demonstrate to its customers the complete functionality of the digital management techniques.

From a monitoring/reporting standpoint, this includes (but is not limited to) reporting of the input voltage level; output voltage; output current and internal junction temperatures.

From a digital control standpoint, the converters and regulators can be programmed via the PMBus interface to modify certain parameters such as the output voltage; soft start/stop levels; delay and ramp-up times and voltage/current/temperature warning and fault levels, including modifying whether the unit should have latching or auto-restart protection.

Additionally, the software can be used to pre-program voltage margining levels for production and qualification testing purposes.