Sustainable energy design lives or dies in the details – a converter that hits efficiency targets on paper but fails EMI compliance on the bench, an LDO that solves noise but blows the thermal budget, a LiDAR system that works in the lab but drifts under real-world temperature swings.
In this third instalment of this series with Texas Instruments, we turn to the engineering trade-offs behind power conversion, precision sensing, and next-generation connectivity: from EMI-first design strategies and low-noise regulation techniques, through to buck converter fundamentals, digital power control, and the laser-driver and isolated bias innovations enabling lidar, ToF and high-density power systems.
Advanced Power Converter Features to Reduce EMI
Integrating an EMI-first design approach early in power-converter development can significantly reduce redesign cycles, filter size and compliance risk. Yet late-stage EMI failures still cause costly delays – even after investing in larger passive filters.
Low noise & low-ripple design techniques
Many noise-sensitive systems use low-dropout regulators (LDOs) to provide low-noise and low-ripple power to sensitive analog circuits. But with growing current demands for these rails, designers are struggling to include LDOs because of their size, power loss, thermal rise and cost.
Basics of power converter design for space applications
This presentation provides an introduction to designing power converters for space applications with a focus on radiation effects.
Topics such as single event effects (SEE) and total ionizing dose (TID) will be covered, including design strategies to account for TID-induced parameter drift and SEE-induced output transients.
Buck converter design basics
This session provides a practical introduction to the design and testing of buck converters. Buck converters are widely used in voltage step-down applications.
After covering the basics of buck converter operation and control, we provide a thorough step-by-step of the design process for a buck converter.
The design example covers design parameters, component selection, control loop compensation, circuit board layout, and hardware testing/results.
Introduction to digital power control
Gain a solid foundation in microcontroller-based digital power control design in this technical webinar. We’ll walk through the core building blocks of a digital control loop — including feedback sampling, compensators, and actuators — and explore how each component impacts overall control loop performance.
Analog Design Journal
From data converters to sensing, beginner to advanced – look to the Analog Design Journal for answers to your analog design questions. Some of the industry’s most knowledgeable engineers share exclusive, carefully curated articles geared toward engineers across all industries and levels of experience.
Achieving nanosecond-level precision laser pulse control for lidar and ToF systems
The growing adoption of autonomous vehicles, industrial automation and advanced robotics is increasing demand for reliable 3D ranging and sensing. Lidar and time-of-flight (ToF) systems rely on precisely controlled laser pulses to measure distance and spatial information. Meeting these requirements demands laser drivers that deliver high peak current and maintain pulse-to-pulse stability across temperature and aging. Whether used for navigation or high-speed industrial inspection, these systems depend on fast, stable and repeatable laser pulses under practical conditions. Traditional discrete topologies that use gate drivers, external field-effect transistors, and current-sensing elements can meet specific design requirements; however, they often introduce trade-offs in terms of layout complexity, calibration effort, and thermal performance.
How integrated isolated bias modules improve power density and reliability
Isolated bias supplies are critical building blocks in high-performance power electronics such as traction inverters, solar inverters, and data-centre power-supply systems, yet they require trade-offs between power density and development time. Isolated DC/DC designs rely on discrete transformers and switching components, which often introduce challenges in meeting power density, reliability and time-to-market requirements.
Realizing 5G network potential through mMIMO and precise beamforming technology
With every new wireless generation, the demand for higher data rates and lower latency increases substantially. 5G advances this trajectory by delivering tens of gigabits-per-second throughput and sub-millisecond latency, essential for applications such as augmented and virtual reality, industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and autonomous systems. Achieving performance targets – especially in dense urban areas and high-mobility scenarios – requires two technologies: massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) and beamforming.
Taken together, these resources reflect a common thread running through modern power and RF design: performance gains increasingly come from tackling problems earlier and more holistically, rather than compensating for them after the fact. Whether that means designing for EMI compliance from the outset, choosing digital control over analog trade-offs, or moving from discrete to integrated topologies in isolated bias and laser-driver applications, the payoff is the same – fewer redesign cycles, tighter tolerances and systems that hold up under real-world conditions.
For teams working across automotive, industrial, space, and telecoms applications, these webinars and articles offer a practical starting point for putting that thinking into practice.
