Using on-board power systems

In recent years the number of voltages used on a circuit pack has been increasing, the voltages are becoming lower and the currents higher. In response, the intermediate bus architecture has become popular. This architecture uses one main converter to transfer power from the main system power bus to a local area power bus on the circuit pack. Individual, nonisolated DC-DC converters are used to create the individual load voltages from the local area power bus. While this approach has many benefits and solves many problems, it is still a power system. This paper discusses several areas that need attention when implementing such a power system.