I have been designing a drone flight controller and currently have been using LDOs to regulate the voltage to 5V.
As I have started to use higher voltage batteries the LDOs have started to overheat. I know that switching regulators are so much more efficient which is definitely a plus with battery-operated devices, but heat is not my only concern when considering which power supply to use.
When the drone's motors are on, the voltage supply becomes very noisy, and I have RF ICs on the board that are incredibly sensitive to power supply noise. Would a switching regulator be better for this application, or would it generally perform worse?
TLDR: When comparing LDOs and switching voltage regulators, which are generally the better performing option in terms of output voltage noise when considering an already noisy power supply?
Best Answer
As you have probably found searching internet, a LDO has generally less ripple/noise/EMI than a SMPS.
You could distribute the heat using resistors in front of the LDO. Adding capacitors to form RC filters help to filter "an already noisy power supply" at the same time.
For example:
You can also preceed the circuit above with a SMPS to gain better efficiency. You probably don't need the RC filters.
But addressing the cause of the problem rather than patching the effect of the problem would be a better approach.