Patents by Inventor Douglas E. Heineman

Douglas E. Heineman has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 7239257
    Abstract: A power converter including a hardware efficient control loop architecture. Error detection circuitry may generate an error signal based on the difference between a power converter output voltage and a reference voltage. An oversampling ADC may digitize the error signal. The transfer function associated with the ADC may include quantization levels spaced at non-uniform intervals away from a center code. A digital filter may calculate the average of the digitized error signal. A nonlinear requantizer may reduce the number of codes corresponding to the output of the digital filter. A proportional integral derivative (PID) unit may multiply the output of the nonlinear requantizer by PID coefficients to generate a PID duty cycle command, and a gain compensation unit may dynamically adjust the PID coefficients to maintain a constant control loop gain. A noise-shaped truncation unit including a multi-level error-feedback delta sigma modulator may reduce the resolution of the PID duty cycle command.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 16, 2006
    Date of Patent: July 3, 2007
    Assignee: Zilker Labs, Inc.
    Inventors: Mark A. Alexander, Douglas E. Heineman, Kenneth W. Fernald, Scott K. Herrington