JAJU732C June 2019 – July 2022
The power loss in the gate driver circuit includes the losses in the UCC21530 and losses in the peripheral circuitry like the gate resistors. The power losses consist of the static power loss, which includes quiescent power loss on the driver as well as driver self-power consumption when operating with a certain switching frequency. Values of the static current flowing into the Vcc1 pin (Ivcc1) , VDDA pin (IDDA) , and VDDB pin (IDDB) are extracted from the data sheet.
By substituting the values from the data sheet in Equation 33, the result is Pstatic losses of the gate driver around 70 mW. The other component of gate driver loss is the switching operation loss.
By substituting the value of VDD = 15 V, VSS = –4 V, FSW = 100 kHz, QG = 211 nC in Equation 34, the switching loss comes to 0.8 W. The gate charge for C3M0016120K (primary side MOSFET) is extracted from data sheet. Similarly, for the secondary side, the switching losses are calculated to be approximately 0.33 W. Gate charge, QG, for the C3M0030090K MOSFET is 87 nC and is obtained from the data sheet. Also during turn on and turn off of the MOSFETs, losses occur in the gate resistors. The turn on and turn off gate resistors are 5.11 Ω and 1 Ω. These resistors are chosen to dampen out the oscillations at the gate. The gate driver IC can source 4 A and sink 6-A peak current during the switching process. Taking an average value of this current pulse over a switching cycle, the turn on and turn off losses occurring in the gate resistors is given by Equation 35.
This value comes to 0.5 W across one switch. Thus, the total losses occurring in the four gate driver cards is 10 W.