Measuring, Modeling, Simulating Capacitors and Inductors

Power supply switching ripple and control loop phase margin are dominated by the output inductor and the bulk capacitors.

Simple RLC capacitor and inductor models can result in a design with more capacitors than necessary adding to the design cost, consuming valuable circuit board real estate and degrading the control loop performance.

Most capacitor datasheets provide very limited information, such as maximum ESR at 100kHz and not the desired information regarding typical values and frequency dependancies of the C, ESR, and ESL.

This short video will show how to make these measurements efficiently and how to use the results directly or create high fidelity measurement-based models for simulation in ADS.