OREANDA-NEWS. Many of today’s wireless ICs have embedded DC-DC converters instead of LDO regulators to reduce the power consumption of the ICs. However, mainstream inductor-based DC-DC converters require an inductor that is relatively bulky and expensive. Capacitor-based DC-DC converters have gained attention recently on their ability to offer a compact, low cost module. However, switched-capacitor DC-DC converters offer high efficiency only in a limited input and output voltage range, since they are based on a discrete conversion ratio; inductor-based DC-DC converters have a continuous conversion ratio. Conventional techniques solve this by connecting multiple switched-capacitor units in series, but this incurs an efficiency penalty.