New Industry Products

CamSemi PSS Controllers Deliver 5 Star Performance For Phone Chargers

July 19, 2009 by Jeff Shepard

Cambridge Semiconductor Ltd. (CamSemi) announced a new family of Primary Side Sensing (PSS) controllers enabling manufacturers to develop top specification, five star-rated mobile phone chargers. The controllers, which are in production, are said to 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 30mW for chargers up to 8W 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.

"CamSemi’s new controllers will further strengthen our position in the mobile phone market and help manufacturers of high-end chargers to meet the industry’s most demanding energy-saving specifications but without adding cost, components or having to compromise performance. C2160 sets a new level for no-load power consumption, while continuing our ’one size fits all’ approach so that one controller can be customised for multiple designs," said David Baillie, CEO of CamSemi.

The C2160 family delivers the same key design benefits as the company’s existing PSS controllers including: what is described as ’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 4W and 8W 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.