Ever more complex electronic systems have pushed the requirements on power management to new limits, with applications needing to satisfy stringent operation frequency constraints while maintaining high efficiency. This article addresses the requirement to avoid any operation of a DC-DC converter in specific frequency bands when regulating light loads in discontinuous-conduction-mode and operating in pulse-skip-mode. The presented flexible mixed-signal solution has been applied to an inverting buck-boost converter for consumer Active-Matrix-Organic-Light-Emitting-Diode display applications. It is designed to regulate an output voltage from -1V to -9V with a load current from 0mA to -880mA. This power-management-integrated-circuit has been fabricated in a 180nm bipolar-CMOS-DMOS technology, and the effectiveness of the proposed solution is shown with measurement results.
