The discontinuous conduction mode in switching power converters is addressed in the paper. Instead of assuming that the load is a linear resistor, an equation is derived that relates the output current to the output voltage and other circuit parameters. Closed-form expressions that relate the output current to the output voltage and the other circuit parameters are obtained for all three of the basic switching converters: buck, boost, and buck–boost. The results obtained apply regardless the load type. To simplify notation, normalization of the output current and the output voltage is introduced. The proposed teaching method has been verified in teaching practice.
