Abstract: Aspects for sensing faults in a redundant power converter are described. An exemplary circuit aspect includes a signal transition monitor for monitoring signal transitions at a predetermined node within the redundant power converter, and a detector for detecting a fault condition in the redundant power converter when a proper signal transition fails to occur during a base period of switching. The aspects sense faults in a manner which allows replacement during a scheduled downtime, so that redundancy is restorable without having an unscheduled outage.

Abstract: Aspects for reporting faults in a redundant power converter are described. An exemplary method aspect includes monitoring at least one node within the redundant power converter. The method further includes tracking values of the at least one node during a predetermined time period, and predicting when a specification of the redundant power converter will be exceeded based on the tracked values.

Abstract: Aspects for isolating faults in a redundant power converter are described. An exemplary system aspect includes a first switch at an input of the redundant power converter for protecting the redundant power converter from a high input voltage, and a second switch coupled within the redundant power converter prior to an output capacitor, wherein efficiency of fault isolation is improved.

Abstract: A system and method for measuring the load current in a power supply driven by switched transformer or the like. Rectified rectangular waveform input voltage pulses are interrupted to exhibit a less than 100 percent duty cycle with an off state value approaching zero volts. A filtering inductor is situated in normal manner between the input voltage pulses and the load. Preferably, a capacitor is connected across the load. A freewheeling diode and sensing resistor are connected across the less than 100 percent duty cycle rectangular input voltage. The peak values of the current pulses through the sensing resistor have been determined to be related to the load current of the power supply. The voltage drop across the resistor is amplified, detected and used to regulate the magnitude of the limited duty cycle input voltage. The voltage drop across the resistor may be used to limit the power supply output current or to balance current in parallel configurations of multiple power supplies.

Abstract: A constant loop gain is achieved in a flyback type DC to DC converter by use of feedback to correct for load variations and feed forward to correct for line voltage variations. The feedback signal and a reference voltage are compared by an error amplifier. An output of the error amplifier is multiplied by a constant and is added to a signal proportional to line voltage. The resulting sum causes modification of the slope of a ramp voltage which is compared to the voltage at the output of the error amplifier to control the "on" times of the converter switching devices.