Patent ID: 7772818

Claim:
An apparatus that measures an average-output-current produced by a switching regulator within an electronic device, comprising: current-sensing-circuitry coupled to a switching field-effect-transistor (FET) within the switching regulator, wherein the current-sensing-circuitry is configured to bypass a small sense current from the conducting current of the switching-FET according to a sense ratio, wherein the conducting current is controlled by a control signal for the switching regulator; a current-to-voltage-converter coupled to the current-sensing-circuitry configured to convert the sense current into a sense voltage; and voltage-averaging-circuitry configured to produce an average-sense-voltage from the sense voltage, wherein the sense voltage is coupled to the input of the voltage-average-circuitry through a switch; and wherein the switch is gated by the control signal which is directly connected to the switch; wherein the average-output-current of the switching regulator is indicated by the average-sense-voltage.