CamSemi has announced a new family of Primary Side Sensing (PSS) controllers, enabling manufacturers to developmobile phone chargers - easily and at low cost. The controllers, which are in production, deliver the highest rating in the voluntary star standard for no-load power introduced in November 2008 by the world's five largest mobile phone makers.
The C2160 family allows manufacturers to cut no-load consumption in normal mode to less than 30 mW for chargers up to 8 W for high volume consumer applications but without adding extra components or compromising any other performance specification. They enable fast start-up times of less than 0.3 seconds to help reduce test costs for manufacturers and ensure that handsets start charging from the moment they are plugged in.
Solutions comply fully with Energy Star 2.0, the newly aligned European Code of Conduct v4 regulations for operating efficiency (level V on the adapter/charger nameplate) and support the micro-USB universal charger approach recently endorsed by the EU.
The C2160 family delivers the same key design benefits as the company's existing PSS controllers including: 'best in class' current and voltage regulation of +/- 5% without board level trimming; easily programmable cable compensation of up to 10%; switching frequency adjustment; and quasi-resonant switching to improve efficiency and reduce EMI. C2161PX2 and C2162PX2 parts are rated at 4 W and 8 W respectively and packaged in SOT23-6.
The new controllers use CamSemi's PSS technology to completely eliminate the need for optocouplers and all secondary-side feedback circuitry; as well as additional components that designers may need to specify to improve the current regulation from a typical PSS flyback design. All controllers are also designed to deliver a much more cost-efficient, energy-saving approach by using low cost bipolar transistors compared with more expensive MOSFETs. Protection features such as over-temperature, input over-voltage and output short-circuit are included as standard to simplify designs and further reduce system costs.