Efficiency Comparison of Different DC-DC Converter Architectures for a Power Supply of a LiDAR System.

LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) is a technology used to measure distances to objects. Internally, a LiDAR system is constituted by several components, including a power supply, which is responsible to provide the distinct voltage levels necessary for all the components. In this context, this paper presents an efficiency comparison of three different DC-DC converter architectures for a LiDAR system, each one composed of three DC-DC converters: in parallel; in cascade; and hybrid (mix of parallel and cascade). The topology of the adopted integrated DC-DC converters is the synchronous buck Switched-Mode Power Supply (SMPS), which is a modified version of the basic buck SMPS topology. Three distinct SMPSs were considered: LM5146-Q1, LM5116, and TPS548A20RVER. These SMPSs were selected according to the requirements of voltage levels, namely, 12 V, 5 V, and 3.3 V. Along the paper, the principle of operation of the SMPSs is presented, as well as the evaluation results obtained for different operating powers, allowing to establish a comprehensive efficiency comparison.