Power Supply

Essay

Power supply is a device used to provide the electric energy to operate the devices running by electric power. It has many special way to provide electric energy to a specific system “ it is mother of the system “ ( Brown, 2001, p.1 ).

The basic function of power supply is to convert Alternative Current voltage to regulated  Direct Current voltage that required by electronic devices. A typical power supply has four different modules each of them has a specific function. Transformer is the first module and its function is to convert high voltage Alternative Current  to low voltage Direct Current. The second module is Rectifier and its main function is to convert low voltage Alternative Current to Direct Current. The third module is smoothing, the Direct Current produced by the rectifier is varying, so smoothing reduce this varying to small rippling. Last module is regulator, it set the Direct Current voltage to constant value by remove the ripples. This is a basic design of power supply. The design can be huge and complicated based on the requirements.

This essay will present the four major types of power supply which are Linear Regulators and Switching Mode Power Supply, Programmable Power Supply, Uninterruptible Power Supply.

The first type of power supply is Linear regulated power supply. It is the basic type of power supply. It produce the regulated output voltage by drop the input voltage. “it is though, a very electrically quiet power supply” (Brown, 2001, p.11). they are often used in ground based equipments and distributed power system.

Linear regulated power supply function is to convert varying Alternative Current input to regulated Direct Current output. The typical circuit use in this type has tow range. One allow more voltage at low current and the other allow more current at low voltage.

Linear regulated power supplies come in tow basic forms called series regulators and shunt regulators. Series regulated power supplies are most common...