Review, Survey, and Benchmark of Recent Digital LDO Voltage Regulators

Abstract

This paper presents a review of the recent digital low-dropout voltage regulators (DLDOs). We have reviewed them in five aspects: control laws, triggering methods, power-FET circuit design, digital-analog hybridization, and single vs. distributed architectures. We then have surveyed and benchmarked more than 50 DLDOs published in the last decade. In addition, we have offered a new figure-of-merit (FoM) to address the shortcomings of the previously proposed FoMs. The benchmark provides insights on which techniques contribute to better dynamic load regulation performance. The survey and benchmark results are uploaded to a public repository.