On-Chip Monitoring for Smart Power Integrated Circuits

An overview of the currently available smart power ICs reveals that a good design should include sensing circuits for protection, analog multiplexer for effic ient use of hardware and analog-todigital converter for real-time monitoring. This research deals with the circuit design and implementation of an advanced smart PIC which features a temperature sensing circuit, a load current detector, a load status detector, a supply (load supply) voltage detector, an analog multiplexer and an 8-bit successive approximation A/D converter. A new approach to the design of the successive approximation A/D converter has been proposed in order to minimize the silicon area and to maximize the operating speed. In order to verify the design approach and the performance of the designed circuits in a timely fashion, the successive approximation A/D converter was implemented using TSMC’s 0.35 μm 3.3 V CMOS process, the sensing circuits and the high power output stage were implemented with a semi-custom array featuring Bipolar/CMOS/DMOS high voltage technology. The experimental results have proved that the fabricated chips are fully functional.