The minimum saturation current spec of Inductor is 300mA in the LPC55xx internal DC/DC converter, why is it 300mA, what is the actual current flowing through the inductor?
1)This is internal DC/DC converter block diagram for LPC55xx, on the LX pin, the 4.7uH inductor and 22uF capacitor are required, the FB pin is the detected pin to sense the output voltage, the DC/DC converter provide about 1.1V power for the VDD_PMU power supply pin.
Let's discuss the current flowing through the inductor L1 via LX pin
2)compute the actual current flowing the inductor
The above circuit is the illustrating block diagram, the control regulation uses PWM signal to control the MOSFET, but the high time of the PWM signal is constant for each PWM cycle, in other words, the on-time of the MOSFET is constant, for the LPC55S69 internal DC/DC converter, the on-time Δt is 0.52us, which means that the interval of MOSFET turning-on time is 0.52us.
Assume that the VDC_IN is 3.3V, the output voltage of the DC/DC converter is 1.1V, the constant high time of the PWM signal is 0.52uS.
when the MOSFET is on, the capacitor will be charged.
The above figure is the waveform tested on the LX pin of LPC55S68 on the LPC55S69-EVK board, you can measure via scope that the high time of the yellow PWM signal is 0.52uS, during which the MOSFET turns on, the capacitor is charged. The inductor works in DCM mode(discontinuous current mode)
The incremental current flowing the inductor during the MOSFET turns on:
ΔI= (VDC_IN-VDC_OUT)* Δt/L=(3.3V-1.1V)*0.52*10**(-6)/4.7*10**(-6)=243mA.
3)The actual flowing current through the inductor is about 250mA for each PWM cycle, so when you select the inductor, the saturation current spec must be greater than actual current, the minimum required saturation current spec for the 4.7uH inductor is 300mA, when you select inductor for the DC/DC converter, you should select the inductor with 300mA or above saturation current .
