Gate Driver Integrated Circuit with Breakdown Protection for Switch-mode Power Amplifiers

This paper proposes a gate driver integrated circuit to prevent breakdown of switching power amplifiers. The proposed circuit consists of a dead-time generator, level shifters, and a breakdown blocker. The dead-time generator makes non-overlapped input signals and the breakdown blocker detects instantaneous turned-on input signals and resets them to the off-state before the switching power cells are damaged. The circuit is designed using TowerJazz’s 0.18μm BCD process for a tightly coupled wireless power transfer system. The protecting operation is verified using circuit simulation including layout-dependent characteristics.