XMC Digital Power Explorer Power Board User Manual
UG_201511_PL30_001
Overview
Board User Manual 3 V1.0, 2015-10
Customer Documentation
1Overview
The XMC Digital Power Explorer is an evaluation board with the goal to help engineers in the learning and
testing of digital power control applications. The board features a synchronous buck converter that can be
controlled digitally with XMC microcontrollers. Synchronous buck converter is one of the most well known
power topologies and many of the concepts of it can be ported to other power stages, what makes the
synchronous buck converter a great platform for leaning and experimenting.
Different control cards can be plugged in to allow the user to select between different price/performance
combinations available in XMC family of microcontrollers.
Both voltage control and peak current control with slope compensation can be implemented in this board.
This board includes loads on board for easy test of step response. Frequency behaviour can be analyized
with the help of a network analyser. XMC Digital Power Explorer is ready for signal injection from network
analyser equipment to study the frequency response of the buck stage.
This board is built with best in class Infineon Technologies components and with the collaboration of
Biricha Digital and Würth Elektronik .
1.1 Key features
The XMC Digital Power Explorer power board is equipped with the following features:
Synchronous buck converter capable of:
oSynchronous and non-synchronous buck converter modes
oVoltage and peak current control methods
o2 channel bucks with 1 XMC. Connecting a second XMC Digital Power Explorer in master-
slave configuration (see section 2.3)
o3 on board loads for testing step response with option to connect external loads –i.e.
electronic loads- for further advanced testing.
oBode diagram measurement ready - requires network analyzer
oDual channel serial communication including PMBus™ (I2C)communication
Control card connector for plugging in:
oInfineon XMC4200 Digital Power Control Card with XMC4200 (ARM®Cortex™-M4F-based)
Microcontroller, 256 kByte on-chip Flash, LQFP64
oInfineon XMC1300 Digital Power Control Card with XMC1300 (ARM®Cortex™-M0-based)
Microcontroller, up to 200 kByte on-chip Flash, TSSOP38
Single package high side and low side MOSFET
Plenty of test points for learning all details of the buck converter
General purpose switch for user interaction or control
1.2 Block diagram
Figure 1 shows the functional block diagram of the XMC Digital Power Explorer. For more information about
the power supply domains please refer to chapter 0.
The buck converter board is comprised of the following building blocks: