Second FRIDA Platform Focuses On DC-DC Power-Module Efficiency

Stockholm, Sweden: Ericsson’s latest digital-power advanced bus converter platform, designed to use board-mounted dc-dc power modules, integrates a number of technical innovations to reduce energy consumption. Built around the capabilities of the 32-bit ARM7TDMI-S microprocessor core, the FRIDA II platform incorporates new hardware and firmware that’s been optimised to ensure the highest efficiency at any point during operation.

The platform combines a tightly regulated output voltage (2%) across the entire operational range—from 36V to 75V—with quick output response to input disturbances such as line transients. Ericsson’s proprietary firmware integrates complex scenarios and potential challenges faced by dc-dc board-mounted power supplies in telecom and datacom applications, such as being connected to an unstable power grid.

An ultra-fast response-loop algorithm adjusts parameters to guarantee output voltage will always be contained within a narrow band, and remain tightly controlled whatever the input conditions, over the input voltage range.

The company’s proprietary dead-time control algorithm was augmented with additional functionalities to reduce switching power losses and ease component stress during switching, helping to boost reliability over the original FRIDA I platform. Combining the algorithm with a unique integrated transformer layout and innovative power-transistor technologies will likely land FRIDA II into a host of information and communication technology (ICT) applications.

The first product based on the FRIDA II platform will be a quarter-brick advanced bus converter, called the BMR456, offering a minimum of 400W output. That will be followed by a new eighth-brick format device, the BMR457, which is expected to provide 250W and higher output power.