NTRODUCTION

Almost all basic household electronic circuits need an unregulated AC to be converted to

constant DC, in order to operate the electronic device. All devices will have a certain
power supply limit and the electronic circuits inside these devices must be able to supply a
constant DC voltage within this limit. This DC supply is regulated and limited in terms of
voltage and current. But the supply provided from mains may be fluctuating and could
easily break down the electronic equipment, if not properly limited. This work of converting
an unregulated alternating current (AC) or voltage to a limited Direct current (DC) or
voltage to make the output constant regardless of the fluctuations in input, is done by a
regulated power supply circuit.

All the active and passive electronic devices will have a certain DC operating point (Q-
point or Quiescent point), and this point must be achieved by the source of DC power.

The DC power supply is practically converted to each and every stage in an electronic
system. Thus a common requirement for all these phases will be the DC power supply. All
low power system can be run with a battery. But, for a long time operating devices,
batteries could prove to be costly and complicated. The best method used is in the form of
an unregulated power supply –a combination of a transformer, rectifier and a filter. The
diagram is shown below.

Unregulated Power Supply – Diagram

 As shown in the figure above, a small step down transformer is used to reduce the
voltage level to the devices needs. In India, a 1 Ø supply is available at 230 volts. The
output of the transformer is a pulsating sinusoidal AC voltage, which is converted to
pulsating DC with the help of a rectifier. This output is given to a filter circuit which
reduces the AC ripples, and passes the DC components. But here are certain
disadvantages in using an unregulated power supply.

Disadvantages of unregulated power supply

1. Poor Regulation – When the load varies, the output does not appear constant. The
output voltage changes by a great value due to the huge change in the current drawn from
the supply. This is mainly due to the high internal resistance of the power supply (>30
Ohms).

2. AC Supply Main Variations – The maximum variations in AC supply mains is give or

take 6% of its rated value. But this value may go higher in some countries (180-280 volts).
When the value is higher it’s DC voltage output will differ largely.

3. Temperature Variation – The use of semiconductor devices in electronic devices may

cause variation in temperature.

These variations in dc output voltage may cause an inaccurate or erratic operation or

even malfunctioning of many electronic circuits. For instance, in oscillators the frequency
will shift, in transmitters output will get distorted, and in amplifiers, the operating point will
shift causing bias instability.

All the above-listed problems are overcome with the help of a  voltage regulator which is
employed in conjunction with an unregulated power supply. Thus, the ripple voltage is
largely reduced. Thus, the supply becomes a regulated power supply.

The internal circuitry of a regulated power supply also contains certain current limiting
circuits which help the supply circuit from getting fried from inadvertent circuits.
Nowadays, all the power supplies use IC’s to reduce ripples, enhance voltage regulation
and for widened control options. Programmable power supplies are also available to allow
remote operation that is useful in many settings.
REGULATED POWER SUPPLY
Regulated power supply is an electronic circuit that is designed to provide a constant dc
voltage of predetermined value across load terminals irrespective of ac mains fluctuations
or load variations.

Regulated Power Supply – Block Diagram

A regulated power supply essentially consists of an ordinary power supply and a voltage
regulating device, as illustrated in the figure. The output from an ordinary power supply is
fed to the voltage regulating device that provides the final output. The output voltage
remains constant irrespective of variations in the ac input voltage or variations in output
(or load) current.

Figure given below shows the complete circuit of a regulated power supply with a
transistor series regulator as a regulating device. Each part of the circuit is explained in
detail.

Transformer

A step down transformer is used to step down the voltage from the input AC to the
required voltage of the electronic device. This output voltage of the transformer is
customized by changing the turns ratio of the transformer according the electronic device
specs. The input of the transformer being 230 Volts AC mains, the output is provided to a
full bridge rectifier circuit.

Know More: Transformers

Full Wave Rectifier Circuit

The FWR consists of 4 diodes which rectifies the output AC voltage or current from the
transistor to its equivalent DC quantity. As the name implies the FWR rectifies both half’s
of the AC input. The rectified DC output is given as input to the filter circuit.

Know More: Full Wave Rectifier & Half Wave Rectifier

Filter Circuit

The filter circuit is used to convert the high rippled DC output of the FWR to ripple free DC
content. A ∏ filter is used to make the waveforms ripple free.

Know More: Filter Circuits

In Short

The ac voltage, typically 230 Vrms is connected to a transformer which transforms that ac
voltage to the level for the desired dc output. A bridge rectifier then provides a full-wave
rectified voltage that is initially filtered by a ∏ (or C-L-C) filter to produce a dc voltage. The
resulting dc voltage usually has some ripple or ac voltage variation. A regulating circuit
use this dc input to provide a dc voltage that not only has much less ripple voltage but
also remains constant even if the input dc voltage varies somewhat or the load connected
to the output dc voltage changes. The regulated dc supply is available across a voltage
divider.

Regulated Power Supply – Diagram

Often more than one dc voltage is required for the operation of electronic circuits. A single
power supply can provide as many as voltages as are required by using a voltage (or
potential) divider, as illustrated in the figure. As illustrated in the figure, a potential divider
is a single tapped resistor connected across the output terminals of the supply. The
tapped resistor may consist of two or three resistors connected in series across the
supply. In fact, a bleeder resistor may also be employed as a potential divider.

Power Supply Characteristics

 There are various factors that determine the quality of the power supply like the load
voltage, load current, voltage regulation, source regulation, output impedance, ripple
rejection, and so on. Some of the characteristics are briefly explained below:

1. Load Regulation – The load regulation or load effect is the change in regulated output
voltage when the load current changes from minimum to maximum value.

Load regulation = Vno-load - Vfull-load

 Vno-load refers to the Load Voltage at no load

Vfull-load refers to the  Load voltage at full load.

From the above equation we can understand that when Vno-load occurs the load
resistance is infinite, that is, the out terminals are open circuited. Vfull-load occurs when
the load resistance is of the minimum value where voltage regulation is lost.

% Load Regulation = [(Vno-load - Vfull-load)/Vfull-load] * 100

2. Minimum Load Resistance – The load resistance at which a power supply delivers its
full-load rated current at rated voltage is referred to as minimum load resistance.

Minimum Load Resistance = Vfull-load/Ifull-load

The value of Ifull-load, full load current should never increase than that mentioned in the
datasheet of the power supply.

3. Source/Line Regulation – In the block diagram, the input line voltage has a nominal
value of 230 Volts but in practice, here are considerable variations in ac supply mains
voltage. Since this ac supply mains voltage is the input to the ordinary power supply, the
filtered output of the bridge rectifier is almost directly proportional to the ac mains voltage.

The source regulation is defined as the change in regulated output voltage for a specified
rage of lie voltage.

4. Output Impedance – A regulated power supply is a very stiff dc voltage source. This
means that the output resistance is very small. Even though the external load resistance
is varied, almost no change is seen in the load voltage. An ideal voltage source has an
output impedance of zero.

5. Ripple Rejection – Voltage regulators stabilize the output voltage against variations in
input voltage. Ripple is equivalent to a periodic variation in the input voltage. Thus,a
voltage regulator attenuates the ripple that comes in with the unregulated input voltage.
Since a voltage regulator uses negative feedback, the distortion is reduced by the same
factor as the gain.
Power Supply Applications.  The reason we're looking at power supplies is because
they are a major use of diodes.  Nearly all computers have some sort of power supplies.
Now a power supply circuit must do several things.  One of them is to convert AC line
voltage into a DC voltage required by the circuit.  They also must reduce the AC voltage
to a lower value and they must continuous adjust the DC output voltage to keep it
constant under varying load conditions.
First of all this point here, we start out from the wall.  We have an AC signal coming out
from the wall, it is 120 volts RMS.  If we looked at it on an o-scope we would see from
here to here we have 170 volts peak.  Now what we want for a computer circuit is we're
going to want about 12 volts DC, five volts DC, maybe 3.3 volts DC, a few
miscellaneous values here.  This is a far cry from this.  We're going to be using our
power supply to do this.  We're going to have a couple of aspects here.  We're going to
use a transformer to reduce the AC to a lower value and then we're going to use a
rectifier to convert the AC into DC.  We start out with the half-wave rectifier.  This is the
most basic of rectifiers.

 
Half-Wave Rectifier
The term rectify is used to describe the conversion of AC into DC.  The circuits shown
only one-half of the input waveform is allowed to pass through to the output.  This is
called half-wave rectification.  We start out with an applied AC voltage and this will be
the case with all of the rectifiers.  We start out with an AC input and we start out with a
10-volt peak signal.  If we were to draw this like this, from here to here on an o-scope
we would measure 10 volts peak.  Notice that we have our diode in the circuit and what
is going to happen is we're showing the current flow is moving in this direction and the
reason was showing it that way is because we have a positive value here and we're
showing ground here.
The flow of current will be from the negative, or from ground, to the more positive value
which is right here.  That will forward bias our diodes.  Remember our diode if we go
from cathode to anode the polarity needs to be a negative to a more positive, at least .7
volts worth.  That will cause this diode to conduct and it will pass this signal.  We will
have this AC signal passed over all of it except for the .7 volts will be passed to the
output.  Another way to view this and I'm going to use this throughout this presentation
is to simply draw a battery over here.  I'm going to put a battery with a positive on top
and negative on the bottom because at this point when we're looking at this phase of
the sign wave input we're on the positive cycle.
You could put a battery in here and this sometimes makes it easier to analyze a circuit
of this nature because it's very clear now that we're going from a negative to a more
positive.  That will forward bias this diode.  We've looked at the positive half of this
cycle.  We saw that that turned the diode on. Now when we look at the negative half of
the cycle, we're coming in here, we looked at this, now we're looking at the negative
half.  On the negative half the polarity of this guide, remember it has to be negative to
positive.  On this side now we have a very negative value.  We could say were going
from ground to a more negative, but actually if we put that battery back in the circuit it
makes a little more sense except that we turn the polarity upside down here.  If we go
like this and we connect the battery like this it makes a little more sense because now
it's very obvious that there's a plus here and a negative here.
This diode remember that you have all the electrons over here on the cathode their
going to be attracted to the positive terminal here and this will cause the depletion
region to become very wide and effectively this will be an open circuit and there'll be no
current flow here and there is no output.
The end result is that we have an AC signal coming in and the output we get half of it
and then it cuts off.  If we continued on here you'd have something that looks like this.
This is what we talked about half-wave rectification.
 

Circuit Operation
This is a description of what we just looked at during the positive alternation the diode is
forward bias and the full applied voltage has dropped across the load resistor.  Here in
the negative alteration the diode is reversed bias and acts like an open circuit.  No
voltage is present across the load resistor.  The output voltage is actually pulsating DC.
Looks like this.
An application for a half-wave rectifier is shown on the following slide.  This is from your
text.  This is a circuit that would recharge batteries.  Now, this is a very basic one and it
utilizes a half-wave rectifier.  Let's look at what we have here; first of all, we have 120
volts AC applied.  We have a switch and a fuse.  This goes into a 12 to 1 transformer
from primary to secondary.  The value that's going to be fed to our rectifier … Let's take
a look we have 120 volts in, 12 to 1 we're going to divide that by 12 so we'll have 10
volts RMS.  Now if we were to convert that to peak, remember our formula we took .
707, 10 volts RMs divided by .707 is going to yield 14.1 volts peak.  Here we have this
value here, now this is one of the purposes that we mentioned in this lesson was that
the purpose of a power supply is to step down the high-end line voltage top a much
lower value.
We use the transformer to step this down and now we have about 14.1 volts peak
applied to this diode.  Now, remember that in a half-wave rectifier our output looked like
this.  We had the humps and we called this pulsating DC.  Now that doesn't really look
like DC and the reason they call it pulsating DC is because it's all positive and if we
were to average this value we could have an average DC level.  There actually is a
formula for doing this.  Your text doesn't address it.  I'm going to mention it briefly;
you're not going to be tested on it, but just for purposes of information.  This is the
formula; you take voltage peak divided by pi or .318 times the peak voltage.  In this
case, it would be .318 times 14.1, or 14.1 divided by pi, at any rate, it's going to yield a
value about 4.5 volts DC.  That would be the average level delivered to this
rechargeable cell over here.
 

Full-Wave Rectifier
 A full wave rectifier applies both halves of an AC waveform to the output.  The circuits
shown are sometimes called a biphase half-wave rectifier and sometimes they're called
a center-tapped rectifier circuit.  At any rate, they employ full-wave rectification.  The
operation of a full-wave rectifier is demonstrated in the figures shown on the following
slide.  Here we have a full-wave rectifier and when we say full-wave … why don't I first
describe what does that mean?  Here we had an input wave coming and this is the
positive, this is the negative.  Now with a full-wave rectifier, the thing that we're going to
get is an output, it's something that is going to look like this.
We're going to be utilizing both the positive and the negative side of the input waveform,
unlike the half-wave that I was only able to use half of it.  We probably ought to talk
about this thing called a center-tapped.  We've alluded to these in our section about
transformers, but let's quickly review.  Notice the secondary here is split by a ground.
This is going to effectively, whatever the voltage is in the secondary, is going to be cut
in half.  This is one of the inherit disadvantages of a full-wave rectifier by the way, but
we're going to be looking at it.  One way to view these circuits is you'll notice the polarity
that's set up by this ground in this place.  Notice there's a positive, negative, positive,
negative, sometimes it's helpful to draw the battery in here.  Notice the positive; let's put
a DC battery here and then another DC battery here.  Notice that the ground is
connected to this side and then to this side here.
We have a positive going directly to this diode and the negative going directly to this
diode.  A transformer does not represent two DC sources, but sometimes it's easier to
understand the current flow if we look at it in terms of the batteries.  What we actual
have is a … here we have our input waveform coming in, positive to negative, and
sometimes it's helpful to view this.  Remember that on this one actually this waveform is
reversed and instead of going positive first notice it is negative.  On this side, we could
view the signal as going like this because here it's positive and here it is negative.  The
idea of this type of a device is that one diode will be on and the other will be off.  If we
look at the polarities of our battery it will make the current quite easy to understand.
Here the upper diode is going to be the conducting diode and you notice, remember that
a polarity needs to be negative to positive across the diode in order for it to conduct
from the cathode to anode.  You notice you had the large positive signal here which
would indicate this is probably going to be conducting.  Notice on the bottom side you
had a large negative, probably tell you this is probably going to be cut off.  Let's look at
it in terms of the battery.  Notice this diode, if we start from there the current flows from
negative to more positive.  Let's look at the path, it would go negative to the ground and
then it would go to the positive terminal.  Effectively this diode sees negative to a more
positive.  This diode would be conducting.  This one would see just the opposite.  It
would have the negative on this side, notice the negative polarity here, and the path for
current coming up through here to the positive side.  This would cut this diode off.
That is the positive alteration or the negative alteration just the exact opposite happens.
We could flip this battery over and let's see if we draw it like this and we go like this.
Then we connect ground and then like so.  Now we are on, let's see the negative, we
draw the sign wave like this and then there's the positive and going like so.  Again, now
things are reversed.  Now on the positive is here.  In fact, if we look at the battery, if we
go from negative to ground, from negative to the positive side of this terminal this diode
would be off and if we look at this one, now this one we've got the negative side of the
battery here.  If we go through the positive is here and this one will be cut off.  What's
the end result?  On this one, we had the positive side will come in forward bias this
diode on the positive cycle.  Then on the negative part of the cycle, the lower was
forward bias and we had another half-wave.  This is constantly switching on every
wave.
The diodes switch, if it's 60 cycles it's switching 60 times a second.  Our end result is if
we have an output that looks like this.  Again its pulsating DC, but now we have twice as
many pulses as we did before.  In fact, if we wanted to backtrack this a bit, remember
we said we had .318, well we're going to have twice that value with our full-wave
rectification.
 

Bridge Rectifier  
A bridge rectifier is more widely used than a center-tapped rectifier.  Circuit operation is
best understood by examining the current paths of the forward and reverse bias diodes
during each half cycle of the input waveform.  Again, we have the input AC coming in
and we're going; in this case, the value of the full-wave is that you don't have to have
the center-tapped transformer.  You can just pout the entire secondary across this
device.  You'll be able to utilize the full secondary rather than just half of it.  It's going to
utilize two diodes bias one.  There's a minor disadvantage here and that's since you're
going through two diodes, instead of dropping .7 you'd dropped 1.4 volts, but that's a
small consequence of being able to use the entire secondary of the transformer.  Again,
let's evaluate the paths for current and the respective diodes.
We have the AC coming in.  Again if we draw the battery here, let's see what we have.
Again in respect to the voltage source let's look at the diodes.  Here we have negative
and we're going to go over here for the negative and we're headed towards the more
positive.  Then from negative to a more positive and this is going to conduct.  It would
be one negative on this side, negative on this side, but the more positive on this side.
These two would conduct.  Now, on the other hand, let's look at these two diodes.  This
one has the positive is placed right here.  Let's see, effectively the positive is only a .7
volt drop away and the negative is right here.  These two diodes will be reversed bias
and these two will conduct.  That's going to be on the positive part of the waveform so
we would have this result and output on the positive.
Now on the negative side again if we draw the battery like this and we take a look at this
on the negative side.  Again if we look at the diodes in relation to the battery if we go
from the negative terminal through the diode, negative to a more positive.  Put the
negative there and then up through the ground and again we're going negative to the
more positive terminal.  These two diodes are forward biased.  Again the negative is
connected here and effectively the positive is connected here.  In this case again, the
positive is here and we're going to have a negative value here and these two are cut off.
On the negative side, we will get another output.  Now for practical purposes, we come
in with an AC signal and we're going to get basically the same pattern that we had with
the full-wave except that we're going to get greater amplitude.  These are more widely
used than the center-tapped variety.
 

Filter Networks
Most electronic applications require smooth DC current to operate properly.  Filtering
pulsating DC circuits accomplishes this.  Adding the capacitor to the output of the half-
wave rectifier filters the pulsating DC into smooth DC.  Now what will happen is in the …
This is basically the rectifier, remember we had an AC signal coming in and then our
output looked like this.  Now we have added a capacitor and the capacitor is adding
what we're calling filtering.  Now, remember the nature of a capacitor is it charges to a
given voltage and then it will hold that charge for a period of time.
Now, in this case, I'm going to draw a little bit bigger picture of it down here, in this case,
what is going to happen is that peak value is going to come in right here and it's going
to charge this capacitor.
It'll charge to the peak value and then the capacitor will begin to discharge.  It will begin
to discharge until; again, another peak value comes in and recharges it.  It recharges to
the peak and then it begins to discharge and then another peak comes in charges it.
You end up with an output that looks like in this drawing right here.  The original signal
would look like this and like this and like this and like this, but the result is something
that looks like this.  The value you're seeing here is a bit exaggerate.  It can get quite
smooth depending on the size of the capacitor and some service will utilize several
capacitors, but this result in value.  This value that's changing slightly is referred to as
the ripple.
 

A Full-Wave Rectifier with a Filter  

A capacitor filter added to the output of a full-wave rectifier is shown at the right.  One
drawback of the half-wave rectifier is the higher level of ripple voltage after filtering.
Full-wave rectification reduces this voltage.  What you'll have with a full-wave rectifier,
remember that our output is going to look … Here I'll draw here.  Remember with full-
wave output we don't have any half-wave we just had one and then one and then one.
With a full-wave, there is less time for this capacitor to discharge.  Remember in a half-
wave we charge to the peak value and then it has this much time to discharge.  Now in
a full-wave or a bridge, the time to discharge is half of that.  What you end up with is a
purer final output.
 

Other Types of Filtering 

simply capacitor filters are adequate for many electronic applications and more critical
applications more complex filter networks are required to reduce, or to eliminate, the
ripple.  There are a couple here that your text refers to.  One is the L filter and another is
the Pi filter. We might show the L is simply an inductor and then there is a capacitor.
The Pi looks like a capacitor with an inductor and then a capacitor.  I guess this looks
like an upside down L and this resembles Pi, I guess.  Those are a couple of other
filters.  We will not go into those, but simply to mention them.  This set we've been
looking at power supplies.  We finished up looking at filtering and this is what ultimately
makes our DC output.  Remember we talked about our purpose was we started out with
an AC signal and the desired result out was a smooth DC.  We mentioned computers
need 12 volts and maybe five volts and we want a smooth DC.
What we've shown here is that the DC might have little ripples in it, but modern power
supplies have got some advanced circuitry that will virtually eliminate those ripples.
This gives us a methodology to take our 120 volts AC in and rectify it, transform it, and
make it into a low-level DC suitable for applications like computers.  We looked at
bridge rectifiers.  We looked at full-wave rectifier.  We looked at an application with a
half-wave rectifier and half-wave rectification.