A charge pump is a kind rage elements to create mp circuits are capable ing electrically simple

of DC to DC converter that uses capacitors as energy sto either a higher or lower voltage power source. Charge pu of high efficiencies, sometimes as high as 90 95% while be circuits.

Charge pumps use some form of switching device(s) to control the connection of v oltages to the capacitor. For instance, a two-stage cycle can be used to generat e a higher pulsed voltage from a lower-voltage supply. In the first stage of the cycle, a capacitor is connected across the supply, charging it to that same vol tage. In the second stage of the cycle, the circuit is reconfigured so that the capacitor is in series with the supply to the load. Ignoring leakage effects, th is effectively provides double the supply voltage to the load (the sum of the or iginal supply and the capacitor). The pulsing nature of the higher voltage outpu t is typically smoothed by the use of an output capacitor. An external or secondary circuit drives the switching, typically at tens of kilo hertz up to several megahertz. The high frequency minimizes the amount of capaci tance required as less charge needs to be stored and dumped in a shorter cycle. The capacitor used as the charge pump is typically known as the "flying capacito r". Another way to explain the operation of a charge pump is to consider it as the c ombination of a DC to AC converter (the switches) followed by a voltage multipli er. The voltage is load-dependent; higher loads result in lower average voltages. Charge pumps can double voltages, triple voltages, halve voltages, invert voltag es, fractionally multiply or scale voltages such as x3/2, x4/3, x2/3, etc. and g enerate arbitrary voltages, depending on the controller and circuit topology. The term 'charge pump' is also used in phase-locked loop (PLL) circuits. This is a completely different application. In a PLL the phase difference between the r eference signal (often from a crystal oscillator) and the output signal is trans lated into two signals UP and DN. The two signals control switches to steer curr ent into or out of a capacitor, causing the voltage across the capacitor to incr ease or decrease. In each cycle, the time during which the switch is turned on i s proportional to the phase difference, hence the charge delivered is dependent on the phase difference also. The voltage on the capacitor is used to tune a vol tage-controlled oscillator (VCO), generating the desired output signal frequency . The use of a charge pump naturally adds a pole at the origin in the loop trans fer function of the PLL, since the charge-pump current is driven into a capacito r to generate a voltage (V=I/(sC)). The additional pole at the origin is desirab le because when considering the closed-loop transfer function of the PLL, this p ole at the origin integrates the error signal and causes the system to track the input with one more order. The charge pump in a PLL design is constructed in in tegrated-circuit (IC) technology, consisting of pull-up, pull-down transistors a nd on-chip capacitors. A resistor is also added to stabilize the closed-loop PLL .