What is a power adapter?

Any electronic equipment needs DC power adapter to supply the circuit, especially the electronic products powered by grid power adapter. In order to adapt to the fluctuation of grid voltage and the change of circuit working state, it is more necessary to have DC regulated power adapter to adapt to the change of grid voltage and load. The switching regulated power supply adapter realizes voltage conversion and voltage stabilization by converting DC into high-frequency pulse and then electromagnetic conversion. Linear regulated power adapter is directly connected in series with a controllable adjusting element to divide the input DC voltage to realize voltage conversion and voltage stabilization. In essence, it is equivalent to connecting a variable resistor in series.

The switching regulated power supply adapter has high efficiency and can boost or depressurize. The linear regulated power adapter can only reduce voltage and has low efficiency. Switching regulated power adapter will produce high-frequency interference, while linear regulated power adapter will have no interference. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages.

In recent years, with the development of electronic technology and people’s research on how to improve the conversion efficiency of regulated power adapter, enhance the adaptability to the power grid, reduce the volume and reduce the weight, the power adapter came into being. In the 1970s, the power adapter was applied to household TV receiver. Now it has been widely used in color TV, video camera, computer, communication system, medical equipment, meteorology and other industries, and gradually replaced the traditional series linear regulated power adapter, so that the performance, efficiency and reliability of the whole machine have been further improved.

Ordinary series regulated power adapters are equipped with power adapter transformers, which have the advantages of stable output voltage and small ripple, but the voltage range is small and the efficiency is low. The output voltage of the parallel regulated power adapter is particularly stable, but the load capacity is very poor. Generally, it is only used as a reference inside the instrument.