Gate Drive Losses Reduction in Switched-Capacitor DC-DC Converters

Switched-capacitor (SC) DC-DC converters have significant losses due to the gate drive of the switches that implement the converter. This study proposes to use a charge sharing technique that can greatly reduce these losses, thus improving the converter efficiency. First we present a theoretical analysis of the technique to highlight the benefits that can be obtained. The technique was applied in an ultra-low-power SC DC-DC converter simulated in a 130 nm CMOS technology. The technique reduces the gate drive power consumption of the DC-DC converter switches by 40.5%, which accounts for an improvement up to 4% in the overall converter efficiency.