It is a further object of one or more embodiments of the disclosure to implement a smooth loop recovery on removal of a short, and to prevent the converter from being put back into maximum frequency mode if it ramps to a high over-current again, providing a natural soft-restart from overcurrent due to a short. Other objects will appear hereinafter.

The above and other objects of the present disclosure may be accomplished in the following manner. Inductor current is sensed in the current-mode loop circuitry and an over-current comparator is used. A masking interval generator is required to mask false over-current triggers caused by converter switching-induced glitches. Simple logic is used to detect if the current-limit comparator indicates over-current at the end of the masking interval and to implement over-current pulse-skipping on genuine over-current detection. This method reuses existing analog circuits to gain over-current protection. Only a small amount of additional digital logic is required to handle over-current pulse skipping and recovery.