Challenges and Trends in Switched Capacitor Power Converters in an IoT World

Mervin John and Yogesh Ramadass
Texas Instruments


Abstract

The size and operational lifetime of individual IoT nodes play a major role in the wide scale adoption of the technology. Highly efficient and dense power management units become necessary to keep the size of the nodes down while enabling them to operate for long durations from a battery or move towards fully self-powered operation. Switched capacitor converters are ideally suited for IoT power management with their ability to provide fully on-chip power conversion and high efficiency power delivery at power levels ranging from a few micro-watts to 100's of milli-watts. In this talk, we will provide an overview of switched capacitor power converters, analyze the design tradeoffs and integration requirements of these topologies and discuss the trends and future challenges that must be met moving forward in an IoT world.