A NOVEL DIGITAL CURRENT MODE CONTROL TECHNIQUE FOR

BUCK CONVERTER
1

MAMATHA S, 2SHUBHA RAO K, 3LAXMI DESHPANDE

1

M-tech Student, 2,3Associate Prof., BNMIT Bangalore

Abstract- The objective of this paper is to design a digital current mode control technique for buck converter. In the proposed
paper, the inductor current is sampled only once in a switching period. A compensating ramp is used in the modulator to
determine the switching instant. The proposed digital current control mode can be used for the high switching frequency
converter as the computational burden on the controller is significantly reduced in this method. It is shown that the proposed
digital method is versatile enough to implement any one of the average, peak and valley current mode control by adjusting the
sampling instant of the inductor current with respect to turn on instant of the switch. The proposed digital current mode control
algorithm is tested on a 12V input and 5V,5A output with 100khz switching frequency.
Keywords- Buck converter, Current mode control, Digital pulse width modulation, Inductor current.

Compared with analog techniques, digital control

approach offers a number of advantage including
programmability, high flexibility, fewer components
and advanced control algorithms.

I. INTRODUCTION
The buck converter is a switch mode, DC-DC, power
supply. It accepts a source voltage, Vg and produces a
lower output voltage, V with high efficiency. An
important component of a practical buck converter is
control feedback which assures a constant output
voltage and attenuates unwanted disturbances. There
are various analog and digital control methods used
and some have been adopted by industry including
voltage- and current-mode control techniques.
Voltage and current-mode control techniques initially
started as analog approaches. Voltage-mode control is
a single-loop control approach in which the output
voltage is measured and compared to a reference
voltage as shown in Fig.1. On the contrary,
current-mode control has an additional inner control
loop, as shown in Fig.(2), and enjoys several
advantages over the conventional voltage-mode
control including;

This paper describes the design and simulation of

digitally controlled dc-dc buck converter in a pulse
width modulation level. The inductor current is
sampled only once in a switching period, The duty
ratio of the next switching period is calculated by
solving for the instant at which the sampled current
becomes equal to the periodic waveform in the
modulator obtained by adding the compensating ramp
to the output of the voltage error amplier. The three
structures of digital pulse width modulator (DPWM)
to implement peak, average and valley current-mode
controls are described. Simulation results of a 5v, 5A
buck converter switched at 100kHz are presented to
validate the novel digital current mode control
technique.

improved transient response since it reduces the

order of the converter to a first order system
Improved line regulation.
Suitability for converters operating in parallel.
Over current protection.

II. ANALOG CONTROL TECHNIQUES

1. VOLTAGE-MODE CONTROL OF BUCK
CONVERTER
As depicted in Fig1, voltage-mode control is a
single-loop controller in which the output voltage is
measured and compared to a reference voltage. The
error between the two controls the switching duty ratio
by comparing the control voltage with a fixed
frequency saw tooth waveform. Applied switching
duty ratio adjusts the voltage across the inductor and
hence the inductor current and eventually brings the
output voltage to its reference value. It has several
disadvantages including

However, the major drawback of the current-mode

control is its instability and sub-harmonic oscillations.
It is found that the oscillations generally occur when
the duty ratio exceeds 0.5 regardless of the type of the
converter. However, this instability can be eliminated
by addition of a cyclic artificial ramp either to the
measured inductor current or to the voltage control
signal.

poor reliability of the main switch,

degraded reliability, stability, or performance when
several converters in parallel supply one load

Digital control of dc-dc converters has a

substantial development over the past few years.

a.

b.

International Conference on Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, 10th August 2014, Jaipur, India, ISBN: 978-93-84209-42-1
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A Novel Digital Current Mode Control Technique For Buck Converter

complex and often inefficient methods of keeping

the main transformer of a push-pull converter
operating in the center of its linear region
d. A slow system response time which may be several
tens of switching cycles.
c.

Fig.3 Block Diagram Of Analog Current-Mode Control

In the control structure the output of the voltage error

amplifier is treated as the current reference by the
modulator. Under steady-state the current reference
is a dc quantity
.The modulator of the
current-mode controller consists of a clock generator,
an S-R F/F, and a comparator.The operating principle
of analog current-mode control the problem of steady
state stability for duty ratio greater than 0.5 and the
use of compensating ramp as solution to the problem
are well known. The corresponding block diagram for
digital implementation is shown in Fig.5. It may be
noted that the digital controller samples the sensed
current only once in every switching period.
Therefore, the actual trajectory of the inductor current
within the switching period is not known to the
controller. This implies that in digital implementation
a comparison of the sampled current and the current
reference will produce duty ratio either 1 or 0 (high or
low). The method uses system information such as
converter topology, the inductance and the input and
output voltages to estimate the slope of the current
within a switching period and thereby can produce a
duty ratio between 1 or 0 . However, as proposed in
this paper, the duty ratio d can be determined from a
much simpler current mode control law if we add a
periodic compensating ramp

Fig,1 Block Diagram of a voltage-mode controller

2. CURRENT-MODE CONTROL OF DC-DC

CONVERTER
Compared with voltage-mode control, current-mode
control provides an additional inner control loop
control. The inductor current is sensed and used to
control the duty cycle, as shown in the Fig.2. An error
signal is generated by comparing output voltage V0
with reference voltage Vref. Then this error signal is
used to generate control signal ic. The inductor current
is then sensed and compared with control signal iC to
generate the duty cycle of the switch and drive the
switch of the converter. If the feedback loop is closed,
the inductor current becomes proportional with
control signal iC and the output voltage becomes equal
to reference voltage Vref.

reference

to the current
in order to generate the modulator

current expression

and then

by finding out the instant (d

current

becomes equal to

at which the sampled

or (1) is satisfied
(1)

Fig.2 Block diagram of a current-mode controller

The duty ratio can therefore be expressed as

3. DISADVANTAGES OF ANALOG CONTROL

TECHNIQUES
a) large part count
b) low flexibility
c) low reliability
d) Difficult to design high performance control
algorithms and implementation cost.

(2)
The discrete control law for the n th switching cycle
can be derived from (2) as
(3)
The previous equation indicates that current is
sampled at the beginning of a control cycle, let us say

1. The period of the control cycle is equal to the

III. DIGITAL CONTROLLER

Fig 3 shows the block diagram of a dcdc converter
that uses analog current-mode control scheme.

switching period

of the converter. Subsequently in

International Conference on Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, 10th August 2014, Jaipur, India, ISBN: 978-93-84209-42-1
58

A Novel Digital Current Mode Control Technique For Buck Converter

the same control cycle the digital controller computes

the right hand side of (3), given by
.
This computation will take finite time, that may even
be more than
, though it must be less
than

. Therefore the value

is unsuitable

to be used as the duty ratio of the period

1 .We

therefore equate
to
, that is the duty
ratio of the next switching period.
It is depicted in Fig4(a) for valley current-mode
control. It may be noted that
is
represented by
computed, to indicate the
actual procedure and in (3) relates to applied.
The current sampled in this method is treated as the
valley current of the inductor, therefore the beginning
of the control period and the turn-on instant of the
switch are synchronized. However, as shown in
Fig.4(a), if we start every control period with the
off-time of the switch then peak current mode control
can be implemented as shown fig 4(b).
Fig 4: (a) Valley current mode (b) Peak current mode
(c) Average current mode

It is also possible to implement average current-mode

control with appropriate choice of the sampling
instant as shown in Fig4(c).

IV. DIGITAL PULSE WIDTH MODULATOR

(DPWM)

In this case, the on-duration of the switch is placed

symmetrically around the center of the switching
period. Therefore, under steady-state, the sampled
current will be equal to the average current of the
inductor. This type of sampling of current has a
practical advantage over the inductor current samples
taken at the valley or at the peak.

The function of the DPWM is to produce switching

signals that correspond to the calculated duty ratio.
This pulse width modulator being digital in nature can
only produces switching signals with discrete values
of duty ratios.

In a practical circuit the analog current sense signal is

distorted by the noise picked up at the moment the
inductor current changes its slope due to turn-on or
turn-off of the switch. This transient almost dies down
if the sample is taken at the instant when the inductor
current reaches its average value.

Fig5:Block diagram of the digital current mode control of dc-dc converter

From fig 6(a) it may be noted that this configuration of

DPWM implements valley current-mode control.
However the structure of DPWM is versatile enough to
implement average and peak current-mode control as
well. For peak current-mode control, a value
corresponding to
is loaded into the
compare register and it is operated in continuous up
mode as shown in fig 6(b).Similarly fig 6(c) shows
average current mode control, the counter is operated
in continuous-up-down counting mode with the
counter loaded with a value corresponding to
.An
integer corresponding to
compare register.

is loaded into

International Conference on Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, 10th August 2014, Jaipur, India, ISBN: 978-93-84209-42-1
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A Novel Digital Current Mode Control Technique For Buck Converter

Fig.6(a) DPWM structure to implement valley current mode

control

Fig.7(b) synchronous buck converter model in simulink.

The validate the advantage of digital current mode

control,the buck converter is initially simulated under
open loop (shown in Fig.8 ). Fig9 & Fig.10 shows
Simulink model and results of voltage mode control
method(open loop) .

Fig.6(b) DPWM structure to implement peak current mode

control.

Fig.6(c) DPWM tructure to implement average current mode

control

V. MATLAB SIMULATION

Fig.8. OPEN LOOP BUCK CONVERTER

The proposed digital average current mode control

technique is tested on a Vg =12-V input buck
converter switched at 100khz that produces the
nominal output of 5V,5A. The inductance L =4.1H
and capacitance C=376F are considered for
simulation.
1. BUCK CONVERTER
Fig.9. VOLTAGE CONTROL MODE OF BUCK
CONVERTER

(a)

Fig 7(a) Synchronous buck converter

The following equations are used to model the buck

converter in simulink.

(b)
Fig.10 Simulation results of open loop buck converter (a)Output
Voltage(b)Inductor Current

International Conference on Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, 10th August 2014, Jaipur, India, ISBN: 978-93-84209-42-1
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A Novel Digital Current Mode Control Technique For Buck Converter

Fig.11 shows Simulink model and results of voltage

mode control method(closed loop) .

CONCLUSION
The proposed paper presents a digital current-mode
control technique for dcdc converters. The controller
samples the inductor current at the rate of the
switching frequency of the converter. The duty ratio of
the PWM period is determined by equating the
sampled current to the equation of the modulator
current that is obtained by adding the periodic
compensating ramp to the output of the voltage error
amplifier. The slope of the compensating ramp is
determined based on the condition of steady-state
stability. The advantage of the proposed digital
current-mode controller is that in order to calculate
the duty ratio of the period it is not necessary to know
the value of the inductance and the input and output
voltages of the converter hence the computational
burden is less compared to conventional methods.

(c)

(d)
Fig.11 Simulation results of voltage control mode buck
converter(c)Output Voltage (d)Inductor Current

Fig.12 and fig 13 shows Simulink model and results

of current mode control method.

REFERENCES
[1]

Souvik Chattopadhyay and Somshubhra Das, A Digital

Current-Mode Control Techniquefor DCDC Convert-ers,
IEEE TRANACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRON-ICS,
VOL. 21, NO. 6, NOVEMBER 2006 .

[2]

Design and Analysis of Digital PWM Controller for DC-DC

Power Converter D.Vinodini, V.Vasanprabhu, V.Rajini, PG
Student, AIHT, chennai. Asst.prof, AIHT, chennai Prof,
SSNCE, Chennai.

[3]

Introduction to MATLAB/Simulink for switched-mode power

converters Colorado Power Electronics Center University of
Colorado, Boulder.

[4]

Power Electronics, Ned Mohan.

[5]

M. Wu, J. Xiao, D. Markovic, and S. R. Sanders, Digital

PWM control: Application in voltage regulator mod-ules, in
Proc. IEEEPESC99 Conf., 1999, pp. 7783 .

[6]

A. P. Dancy and A. P. Chandrakasan,Ultra low power control

circuits for PWM regulators, in Proc. IEEE PESC97 Conf.,
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[7]

A. P. Dancy, R. Amirtharajah, and A. P. Chandrakasan,

High-efficiency multiple-output dcdc conversion for low
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252263, Jun. 2000.

[8]

A. V. Peterchev, J. Xiao, and S. R. Sanders, Architec-ture and

IC implementation of a digital VRM controller.

Fig.12 Current mode control of buck converter

(e)

(f)
Fig.13 Simulation results of current control mode buck
converter (e)Output Voltage (f)Inductor Current

International Conference on Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, 10th August 2014, Jaipur, India, ISBN: 978-93-84209-42-1
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