A Novel Dual-Channel Isolated Current Source Gate Driver for High-Frequency MOSFET Operation: With Hardware-in-the-Loop Verification

Abstract

A new dual-channel isolated current source gate driver (ICSGD) and its real-time hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) implementation is presented in this article. The proposed technique is well suited for higher power applications that require two galvanically isolated and synchronous gate drive signals. The proposed gate driver can achieve very fast turn-on and turn-off transitions, due to its current mode nature. In addition, this technique can achieve partial gate energy recovery by recovering a part of the rms ( $CV^2$ ) energy, which is typically dissipated over the gate drive resistors in voltage source gate driver (VSGD) techniques. The proposed ICSGD provides better control over the gate charging and discharging process as it allows the engineers to carefully time the turn-on/turn-off transitions. It provides superior performance over its VSGD counterparts, especially in high-frequency (HF) operations. The digital implementation of the proposed circuit using Typhoon’s HIL platform proves highly effective for evaluating design reliability and testing design parameters in realtime, enabling comprehensive validation prior to physical implementation. The HIL system is implemented on Typhoon’s HIL402 module. The control algorithm is implemented on a Texas Instruments F28335 digital signal processor (DSP), which is then integrated with the HIL402 module using a Typhoon HIL DSP interface. The model is verified with a match of results from PSIM and Typhoon. The PSIM & HIL results show that the ICSGD achieves a minimum of 20% efficiency improvement.