How a Low Noise Power Supply Can Benefit Sensitive Equipment
Noise is a common problem affecting the operation and design of electronics. It is of particular interest in applications where radiated emissions, conducted emissions, and common mode noise can adversely affect sensitive equipment.
Medical imaging and electronics manufacturing environments are just two industries where the most effective solution to this problem is a low noise power supply.
The Problems That a Low Noise Power Supply Can Solve
Inspection, measurement, and medical systems cannot allow for noise, whether ripple or random, to affect their delicate and precise signals. Conventional AC to DC power supplies employ hard switching to produce their DC output.
The inefficiency of hard switching produces an AC signal on top of the DC output. This consistent noise pattern is ripple, which can cause serious problems in precise applications.
A low noise power supply instead employs soft switching to eliminate ripple. This method produces a sinusoidal waveform, eliminating the trapezoidal hard switching waveform’s raising and lowering edges.
Effectively, the sinusoidal waveform allows voltage and current to cross 0 simultaneously, eliminating the noise signal source. Noise is greatly reduced through the soft switching approach.
Using a low noise power supply does not only reduced ripple noise. The soft switching approach also reduces the radiated emissions that can adversely affect sensitive equipment.
The low noise power supply meets and exceeds expectations for conducted emissions reduction, ensuring proper operation without the need for additional filters. Hard switching produces significant conducted emissions, far beyond the limits for delicate medical devices.
Hard switching produces surges to the ground line. These surges appear as common-mode noise, spikes in voltage that can damage delicate signals.
Low noise power supplies effectively mitigate this issue through soft switching. Soft switching also leads to a marked reduction in leakage current, making equipment safer without the need for filters.
Low Noise Power Supply is Right for a Wide Variety of Applications
Low noise power supplies are available for a variety of applications. Standard options can range from 50W up to 300W for industrial and medical applications. These power supplies can be found in voltages of 5V, 12V, 15V, 24V, 30V, and 48V.
The versatility of low noise power supplies allows them to be implemented for many different equipment types, eliminating additional design considerations.
Low noise power supplies provide a cost-effective solution to the problems that noise presents in delicate applications. Mitigating these problems through traditional methods requires additional equipment and introduces additional design challenges.
Many solutions introduce further problems, which must, in turn, be solved. Readily available low noise power supplies eliminate this challenge.
Anyone attempting to design around noise will quickly discover how complex the problem is and understand just how efficient and effective implementing a low noise power supply would be.
They are lightweight and compact, simple to understand, and easy to use. Rather than trying to design a filter and factoring in leakage, gain, destabilization, resonant frequencies, and more, the design can rely on low noise power supplies to eliminate the problem at the source.