There is provided a switch mode power supply circuit including at least
one inductive component coupled to an associated switching device for
cyclically connecting the inductive component to a source of power. The
circuit includes a signal output representative of a voltage at a
junction of the at least one inductive component to the switching device.
The circuit further comprises a hard switching amplitude detector for
deriving a measure of hard switching amplitude occurring in operation in
the switching device the detector including a signal processing path for
receiving the signal output and generating the measure of hard switching
amplitude therefrom. The signal path includes: a signal differentiator
for imperfectly differentiating the signal output to generate a
corresponding imperfectly differentiated signal; and a signal integrator
for integrating the imperfectly differentiated signal in a
temporally-gated manner for generating the measure of hard switching.