Efficiency Report

It is possible to obtain an efficiency report from a DC-DC converter from a time domain .tran analysis that contains the keyword "steady". After a steady state simulation, an efficiency report can be made visible on the schematic as a block of comment text:

The efficiency of the DC-DC converter is derived in the following manner. In order to identify the input and output, there should be exactly one voltage source and one current source. The voltage source is assumed to be the input while the current source is assumed to be the output. The output can also be identified if the load is a resistor with an instance name of Rload. The circuit is run until steady state is sensed by the simulator. This requires the SMPS macromodels to be written with information on how to detect steady state. Usually this is detected by noting when the error amp current, averaged over a clock cycle, diminishes to a small value for several cycles. Then at a clock edge, the energy stored in each reactance is noted and the simulation is run for another ten clock cycles but now integrating the dissipation in every device. At the clock edge of the last cycle, the energy stored in every reactance is noted again and the simulation is stopped. The efficiency is reported as the ratio of output power delivered to the load by the input power sourced by the input voltage after making an adjustment for the change in energy stored in the reactances. Since the dissipation of each device was also noted, it is possible to look how close the energy checksum is to zero.

You can usually compute efficiency of SMPS circuits you draft yourself by using checking the "Stop simulating if steady state is detected" in the Edit Simulation Command editor. After the simulation, use the menu command View=>Efficiency Report.

Automatic detection of steady state doesn't always work. Sometimes the criteria for steady state detection is too strict and sometimes too lenient. You then either adjust the option parameter sstol or simply interactively set the limits for the efficiency integration.