LTC3407-3

10

34073fa

Hot Swap is registered trademark of Linear Technology Corporation.

Since the ESR of a ceramic capacitor is so low, the input

and output capacitor must instead fulfill a charge storage

requirement. During a load step, the output capacitor must

instantaneously supply the current to support the load

until the feedback loop raises the switch current enough to

support the load. The time required for the feedback loop

to respond is dependent on the compensation and the

output capacitor size. Typically, 3-4 cycles are required to

respond to a load step, but only in the first cycle does the

about 2-3 times the linear drop of the first cycle. Thus, a

good place to start is with the output capacitor size of

approximately:

C

I

fV

OUT

OUT

O

DROOP

≈

∆

25

.

•

More capacitance may be required depending on the duty

cycle and load step requirements.

In most applications, the input capacitor is merely re-

quired to supply high frequency bypassing, since the

impedance to the supply is very low. A 10

µF ceramic

capacitor is usually enough for these conditions.

Power-On Reset

The POR pin is an open-drain output which pulls low when

either regulator is out of regulation. When both output

voltages are above –8.5% of regulation, a timer is started

This delay can be significantly longer in Burst Mode

operation with low load currents, since the clock cycles

only occur during a burst and there could be milliseconds

of time between bursts. This can be bypassed by tying the

POR output to the MODE/SYNC input, to force pulse

skipping mode during a reset. In addition, if the output

voltage faults during Burst Mode sleep, POR could have a

slight delay for an undervoltage output condition and may

not respond to an overvoltage output. This can be avoided

by using pulse skipping mode instead. When either chan-

nel is shut down, the POR output is pulled low, since one

or both of the channels are not in regulation.

Mode Selection & Frequency Synchronization

The MODE/SYNC pin is a multipurpose pin which pro-

vides mode selection and frequency synchronization.

which provides the best low current efficiency at the cost

of a higher output voltage ripple. Connecting this pin to

ground selects pulse skipping mode, which provides the

lowest output ripple, at the cost of low current efficiency.

The LTC3407-3 can also be synchronized to an external

2.25MHz clock signal (such as the SW pin on another

LTC3407-3)by the MODE/SYNC pin. During synchroniza-

tion, the mode is set to pulse skipping and the top switch

turn-on is synchronized to the rising edge of the external

clock.

Checking Transient Response

The regulator loop response can be checked by looking at

the load transient response. Switching regulators take

several cycles to respond to a step in load current. When

equal to

overshoot or ringing that would indicate a stability

problem. The initial output voltage step may not be within

the bandwidth of the feedback loop, so the standard

second-order overshoot/DC ratio cannot be used to deter-

mine phase margin.

The output voltage settling behavior is related to the

stability of the closed-loop system and will demonstrate

the actual overall supply performance. For a detailed

explanation of optimizing the compensation components,

including a review of control loop theory, refer to Applica-

tion Note 76.

In some applications, a more severe transient can be caused

by switching in loads with large (>1

µF) input capacitors.

The discharged input capacitors are effectively put in par-

can deliver enough current to prevent this problem, if the

switch connecting the load has low resistance and is driven

quickly. The solution is to limit the turn-on speed of the

load switch driver. A Hot Swap

specifically for this purpose and usually incorporates cur-

rent limiting, short-circuit protection, and soft-starting.

APPLICATIO S I FOR ATIO