Resonant buffer apparatus, method, and system

Details Resonant buffer apparatus, method, and system Resonant buffer apparatus, method, and system

2003-04-30

2004-09-28

Callahan, Timothy P. (Department: 2816)

Miscellaneous active electrical nonlinear devices, circuits, and

Signal converting, shaping, or generating

Current driver

C327S108000, C326S082000, C326S087000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06798256

ABSTRACT:

FIELD
The present invention relates generally to buffer circuits, and more specifically to low power buffer circuits.
BACKGROUND
A prior-art inverting buffer is shown in FIG.
1
. Buffer
100
includes transistors
102
and
104
. The buffer drives voltage V
OUT
on node
108
across load capacitor
110
to high and low values depending on voltage V
IN
on node
106
. The capacitance value of capacitor
110
is shown as C. Voltage waveforms during the operation of buffer
100
are shown in FIG.
2
. At time t
1
input voltage V
IN
goes high and output voltage V
OUT
goes low. At time t
2
V
IN
goes low and V
OUT
goes high. For two transitions of V
OUT
there are two transitions of V
IN
.
If E
BUF
represents the energy dissipated in buffer
100
when C=0, then when C>0, the total dissipated energy for two transitions at V
OUT
is given by:
E
TOT
=E
BUF
+E
LOAD
, E
LOAD
=C
*(
V
CC
−V
SS
)
2
  (1)
Buffer energy E
BUF
has only a small dependence on the value of C. Even if a very small and very slow buffer was used, so that E
BUF
approaches zero, the total energy E
TOT
would always be larger than E
LOAD
. The energy values can be normalized to load energy as follows:
E
TOT
E
LOAD
=
E
BUF
E
LOAD
+
1
≥
1
(
2
)
Equation 2 shows that for a resistive buffer governed by equation 1, the normalized energy cannot decrease below one.
For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification, there is a need in the art for alternate buffer circuits.


REFERENCES:
patent: 4492881 (1985-01-01), Anderson et al.
patent: 4862018 (1989-08-01), Taylor et al.
patent: 4873460 (1989-10-01), Rippel
patent: 6172550 (2001-01-01), Gold et al.
patent: 6201420 (2001-03-01), Harvey
patent: 6285236 (2001-09-01), Stephens
“High Efficiency Synchronous Step-Down Switching Regulator”,Linear Tehcnology, LTC 1735, (1998),pp. 1-32.
Flatness, Randy, et al., “New LTC 1435-LTC1439 DC/DC Controllers Feature Value and Performance”,Linear Technology, vol. VI No. 1,(Feb. 1996),pp. 1,3-6, 22.

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