The present invention provides an extension to a standard N-bit digital pulse width control method which can discriminate 2N discrete pulse widths per pulse cycle. The present invention provides a method and apparatus that can modulate the pulse widths over a period of 2M pulse cycles in which each pulse cycle can have its own pulse width or respective duty cycle. The resulting time averaged or effective pulse width therefore can be controlled with a resolution of 2N+M states rather than a resolution of 2N states as is common with standard methods.