Automation of device validation using digital power technology and PMBus communication

Power subsystems today are no longer stand-alone and are being integrated into total systems. Digital power technology helps in reducing power consumption and managing the power complexity of the recent electronic systems. For the success of digital power management, it is very much necessary to have a standardized way of communication with the power subsystem. One of the first standards for such communications is the Intel's System Management Bus (SMBus) based on I2C bus from Philips. PMBus specification is an improved version of SMBus to allow digital control of a power supply over a specified physical bus. Power related testing of devices/products including power consumption, margining, sequencing in the traditional system requires manually changing the passive components and additional setup for each test case which is cumbersome. Digital power technology provides a good cost-effective approach to automate this process. The paper provides the automation of device validation using the concept of digital power and the Texas Instrument's UCD9224 Digital PWM controller.