1 Introduction

The DRV8376 provides a gate drive and power stage for driving a 4.5V to 65V brushless-DC motors. The DRV8376 integrates three 1/2-H bridges with 70V absolute maximum capability and a very low RDS(ON) of 400mΩ (high-side plus low-side) to enable high power drive capability. Current is sensed using an integrated current sensing feature eliminating the need for external sense resistors. Power management features with integrated LDO generate the necessary voltage rails for the device and can be used to power external circuits. DRV8376 implements a 6x or 3x PWM control scheme which can be used to implement sensored or sensorless field-oriented control (FOC), sinusoidal control, or trapezoid control using an external microcontroller. The DRV8376 is capable of driving a PWM frequency up to 100kHz. The control scheme is highly configurable through hardware pins or register settings ranging from motor current limiting behavior to fault response.

The DRV8376 integrates three, high-performance low-side current sense amplifiers for current measurements using built-in current sensing. Low-side current measurements are commonly used to implement overcurrent protection, external torque control, or brushless-DC commutation with an external controller. All three amplifiers can be used to sense the current in each of the half-bridge legs (low-side FETs). The current sense amplifiers include features such as programmable gain and external reference is provided on a voltage reference pin (VREF).