Bay Linear, Inc
2478 Armstrong Street, Livermore, CA 94550 Tel: (925) 606-5950, Fax: (925) 940-9556 www.baylinear.com
B1581
APPLICATIONS NOTES
The B1581 is designed as a high performance and low cost
solution for application requiring a lower dropout than
traditional NPN regulators.
The B1581 uses a separate input voltage V
CTRL
(V
CTRL
≥
V
OUT
+ 1.3V) to minimize the dropout voltage. This allows the
2.5V power for the load to come from a 3.3V system supply.
As added benefit this will reduce the heat dissipation, and
lower heat sink and cooling fan cost. A typical application
would use 5V for Vin and 3.3V for V
CTRL
from a motherboard
power supply to provide a nominal 2.5V output. Using the
sense pin allows to Kelvin measure the output, reducing
resistive-associated errors.
The B1581 can power the 2.5V core voltage for
microprocessors such as Pentium
, P55C
, AMD5k86
and
K6
and the IBM PowerPC
603EV and 604EV processors.
*The reduction of heat dissipation is a result of the increase of
the regulator efficiency (efficiency = V
OUT
/ V
IN
).
TYPICAL APPLICATION
Adjustable Regulator Design
1.25V reference voltage is being developed between the
SENSE pin and the ADJ pin of the AS1581. Adding two
external resistors (see fig 1.) will allow setting the output
voltage from 1.25V to 6V. R
1
is chosen so that this
current is specified minimum load current of 10mA. R
2
is
given by the formula: V
OUT
= V
REF
(1+ R
2
/R
1
) + I
ADJ
(R
2
).
The current flowing from the ADJ pin is typically 50
μ
A.
This ADJ pin contributes to the final VOUT but is usually
neglected. Connecting the sense pin to the top of the
resistor divider will improve load regulation.
Lowering Noise
Using the SENSE pin to Kelvin the load will increase
accuracy of the output voltage during load regulation. For
the fixed voltage devices, adding a capacitor at the GND
pin will improve transient response. This capacitor is
chosen in the range of 1
μ
F to 0.1
μ
F and will depend on
the amount of output capacitance in the system.
BAY LINEAR
B1581
SENSE
ADJ
V
IN
V
CTRL
R1
124
C4
2 X 330uF
C2
10uF
C1
330uF
5V
V
CTRL
3.3V
V
IN
1
2
3
4
5
C3
.033uF
(1) V
CTRL
needed when V
< 5V.
(2) V
OUT
= V
(1 + R2/ R1) + I
R2.
(3) V
REF
is measured across adjust to sense.
2.5V
V
OUT
R1
124
V
OUT
Fig. 1 Adjustable Regulator