Switching Regulators for Poets

The above title is not happenstance and was arrived at afterconsiderable deliberation. As a linear IC manufacturer, it isour goal to encourage users to design and build switchingregulators. A problem is that while everyone agrees thatworking switching regulators are a good thing, everyonealso agrees that they are difficult to get working. Switchingregulators, with their high efficiency and small size, areincreasingly desirable as overall package sizes shrink.Unfortunately, switching regulators are also one of themost difficult linear circuits to design. Mysterious modes,sudden, seemingly inexplicable failures, peculiar regulationcharacteristics and just plain explosions are commonoccurrences. Diodes conduct the wrong way. Things gethot that shouldn’t. Capacitors act like resistors, fusesdon’t blow and transistors do. The output is at ground, andthe ground terminal shows volts of noise.