Design of a gate driver for switching power amplifier for Power Hardware-in-Loop Simulation

The hardware in loop simulation for electrical systems combines advantages of digital and physical simulations. It can effectively shorten the development cycle of aircraft electrical simulation system. Power amplifier plays an important role in PHIL simulation. However, limited bandwidth power amplifier exhibits an enlarge delay in tracking the reference signal, which causes PHIL simulation error and even leads to instability. The WBG devices such as silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFET has the capability to reduce the power losses and nonlinearity, which enables enlarge bandwidth without compromising on efficiency. At high switching frequencies, high voltage variation rate spikes, and wrong conduction of the voltage ringing bias SiC MOSFET causes crosstalk, which will lead to crowbar current and increase switch loss. In order to improve the crosstalk tolerance of the system half-bridge structure, a gate-level series driver applied to the SiC MOSFET has been proposed, which can generate a negative turn-off voltage. The negative voltage can be generated without additional power supply. The proposed gate driver enables swift transitions between saturation and cutoff region, and improve switching characteristics.