Switching Power Supply

Switching power supplies are vital components in a wide range of electrical systems. They provide the transition from alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC). DC power is essential for practically all electronics.

However, the mechanism used to produce this transition introduces an additional problem – switching power supply noise.

What Is Switching Power Supply Noise?

Traditional switching power supplies rely on hard switching to convert AC to DC. This process doesn’t completely level out the waveform of AC power, meaning that there is a residual noise signal in the power supply.

This noise is unacceptable in high-precision applications such as medical equipment, audio systems, and RF transceivers, where even minor noise can degrade signals significantly.

This portion of the signal noise is called ripple and is a serious concern in many applications. There are additional types of noise that also create issues with sensitive equipment.

Conducted emissions and radiated emissions from other equipment also create noise. There is also leakage current that can impact equipment effectiveness and cause damage.

How Can Electrical Systems Deal with Switching Power Supply Noise?

In many applications, the equipment has had to be engineered with switching power supply noise in mind from the very start.

This creates a considerable challenge, as the necessary filters must be incorporated into the electronics design.

Given the variety of different noise sources that designers must account for, these filtering requirements can quickly become excessive.

Many of these are coil-based filters at the AC input. These can reduce noise but also lead to an increase in leakage current.

Other methods have similar trade-offs, so designing electronics that account for all possible sources of noise is difficult, expensive, and often prohibitive in certain applications. However, there is another way to face this challenge.

Ultra-Low Noise Power Supplies

Rather than focusing on complex electronics design, electrical systems can rely on ultra-low noise power supplies to deal with switching power supply noise in many applications.

These power supplies address many sources of noise at once with no modification to the original electronics design, including ripple, leakage current, and conducted and radiated emissions.

These power supplies incorporate soft switching, a revolutionary new technology that drastically reduces ripple.

They incorporate a new method for balancing the AC waveform that creates DC power without a notable residual signal. This improvement also improves efficiency with less power wasted compared to hard switching.

This new technology is available for a wide range of different applications.

Models are available in the appropriate power and voltage options for nano-tech instruments, medical diagnosis and imaging, electronics inspection systems, audio systems, and RF transceivers.

Power supplies developed by Daitron Japan include several series for different requirements.

Industrial and medical-grade ultra-low noise power supplies are available in 50W, 150W, and 300W. Output voltage options range from 5V to 48V.

These versatile soft-switching power supplies are available for electronics of all kinds and can drastically reduce noise and eliminate the need for built-in noise filtering.

With these and other unique power supply options, noise can’t be dealt with effectively and affordably without extensive equipment alteration.