New short-circuit protection for voltage regulator

Abstract

This paper presents a new means to protect a simple voltage regulator using a FET instead of the conventional bipolar transistor. The scheme reduces the circuit's time response as well as its output current variations with temperature, while at the same time simplifies the overall circuit. Several laboratory tests, in conjunction with SPICE simulations confirm that the temperature coefficient of the output current in the new circuit is about one third than that of the conventional one.