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Linear Power Supply SMPS Electronics Related Questions

What is the difference between linear power supply What are the advantages of SMPS over other
and SMPS I need a clear explanation? power supply?

Answer Follow · 1 Request What are the advantages of SMPS compared to a

linear power supply?
1 Answer
What's the difference between linear power supply
and switch power supply?
Chandra Ganeshan, Built many circuits in the field of Power Electronics
Updated Jan 5 Why is a linear power supply called "linear"?

Weight of the transformer is Inversely Proportional to frequency. This is the What are the difference between SMPS and UPS?

crucial factor which led to the invention of the SMPS. To know the difference What is SMPS?
between Linear power supply and SMPS read below.
What are the differences between SMPS and
normal power supplies?
Long time ago when a DC power supply is required AC-DC converter is made
What is the difference between charger and
with the help of Step Down Transformer(50Hz/60Hz) followed by a Bridge-
SMPS?
Rectifier circuit and then a Voltage Regulator IC.
What is the difference between a power
But all modern AC-DC converter only contains SMPS circuit(Mobile/Laptop transformer and a distribution transformer?

Charger, Circuit powering CPU etc.,) What are the pros and cons of linear versus
switch-mode power supply?
So what happened to the Linear power supply, Here comes the actual
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advantages and disadvantages.
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More Related Questions
Although Linear power supply were able to provide the requirement of AC-DC
conversion. The circuit is very very bulky and adds to weight. This is because of
the fact that it uses a 50/60 Hz transformer. Remember, as i said weight of the
transformer is inversely proportional to frequency.

So scientists were trying to reduce the weight of the AC-DC circuit to make the
charger more portable and easy to handle. For this they need to Increase the
Frequency so as to bring up a decrease in weight.

But these normal transformer (50/60Hz Tranformer) cannot work at higher

frequency.

So a specially made transformer which can work at higher frequency were made
called Switch Mode Transformer. It can handle frequency of about 50 KHz to
1MHz.

So that’s how scientist reduced the weight of the AC-DC circuit.

So is that all the difference between Linear and SMPS circuit? The answer is No.

Another major aspect about Linear power supply is that they are open loop
circuit, meaning they do not employ any feedback mechanism to control output
voltage.

Suppose for example you buy a Linear charger in Asia(AC supply voltage in
ASIA-240 Volts) which outputs 5 Volt DC. Imagine If you are going to connect
this charger in U.S.A.(AC supply voltage in U.S.A - 110 Volts). It will not provide
the same output voltage 5 Volt D.C. It will be lesser than 5 Volt D.C. As you can
observe the fact that it does not employ any control mechanism to control its
output to same 5 Volt, when the input supply voltage changes.

On the other hand, imagine you are buying the Same charger in Asia. But this
time you are buying a SMPS charger instead of Linear charger. And if you
connect the SMPS charger to U.S.A. The output of SMPS will be 5 Volts even with
the reduced input voltage. This is because of the Feedback mechanism in the
SMPS. Stop reading if you are bored here. Go ahead if you wanna know more!

So Lets go to the circuit inside Linear and SMPS circuit.

Linear Power Supply:

As you can there is 50/60 Hz transformer at the input followed by Bridge

Rectifier followed by the Regulator. So Lets say the Input Voltage decreases to
about 110 Volts from 240 Volts. The output of the Transformer will decrease to
nearly half . So instead of outputting 5 V AC it will now output 2.5 Volt
approximately so this will be converted to DC by the bridge rectifier and finally
after regulation you will end up with just 2.5 Volt DC or even lesser. This is a
major disadvantage to the equipments that we connect to this charger. So lets
see how it is overcome in SMPS circuit.

Switched Mode Power Supply:

So here the Input voltage at 240 Volts at 50/60Hz frequency is first fed to Input
Rectifier stage, Which converts 240 Volt AC to 240 Volt DC. This 240 DC voltage
is fed to a High Frequency Switch which converts this DC to High Frequency AC
at 240 Volts with a frequency between 50KHz to 1MHz, as mentioned in the
circuit. So now we have 240 Volt AC at a higher frequency. Here comes the
Switched Mode Transformer. These Switched Mode Transformer(SMT) are
capable of handling higher frequency. So this SMT will now step down the 240
Volt AC at Higher frequency to required Output AC voltage at higher frequency.
And the output AC voltage is now converted to DC using output rectification and
filtering circuit. The DC output voltage is fed back to the control circuit which
gives the firing pulse for the High Frequency Switch. Thus achieving AC to DC
conversion

So coming to the example,

If you connect the SMPS charger in U.S.A. Lets see what happens.

Input voltage will be 110 Volts and the Input DC rectification circuit will convert
this 110 Volt AC at 60Hz to 110 Volt DC and the High frequency Switch will
convert this 110Volt DC to 110 Volt AC at Higher Frequency(110 Volt AC with
frequency between 50 kHz and 1MHz). The SMT will step down this voltage to
the required value which will be converted to DC by the output rectification
circuit. Here we will now have a reduced output DC voltage less than 5 Volts. But
since it employs feed back mechanism. Feed back pulses will be sent to the
control circuit of the High Frequency switch which will indicate that the output
voltage is lesser than the required value. So the duty cycle of the firing pulse to
be fed to the High frequency switch is increased and this increased on time of
the switch increase the average voltage at the output and thus the duty cycle of
the firing pulse is kept on increasing till the output voltage reaches 5 Volts. This
is how the output voltage is adjusted even if the input voltage changes. This is
the reason why you will see a label in the Laptop and mobile chargers indicating
that it can work between in 100 Volts to 240 Volts as seen in the label below.

Due to these exemplary advantages SMPS is now used in all major circuit as it
employs Closed Loop mechanism and also because of the fact that it is lesser in
weight.

On the other hand, due to heavy weight and Open Loop mechanism Linear
Power Supply is not used anymore widely.

There are also even more advantages for SMPS in the fact that SMPS have higher
efficiency than Linear power supply. Whereas Linear power supply have lower
efficiency dissipating major portion of energy as heat.

The advantages of SMPS are unlimited!

Questions are welcome!

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