Current Source Gate Drive Circuits with Low Power Consumption for High Frequency Power Converters

In this paper, three types of the gate drive circuits; voltage source, current source with continuous current and current source with discontinuous current gate drive circuits are compared from the view point of power consumption of the three types of the gate drive circuits and the switching loss of the main MOSFET. It is confirmed that the power consumption of the gate drive circuit is reduced by 56.4% using the current source gate drive circuit with discontinuous current source compared with that of the voltage source gate drive circuit by a switching test at the switching frequency of 1 MHz. Secondary, the switching loss of the main MOSFET is evaluated by experiment. The turn on and the turn off losses are 1.34 W and 1.76 W when the conventional voltage source gate drive circuit. On the other hand, the turn on and the turn off losses are 1.4W and 1.54W. The turn on loss and the turn off loss are almost same value because the input peak current of the conventional voltage source gate drive circuit and the input reactor peak current of the current source gate drive circuit with discontinuous current are same. Therefore, the current source gate drive circuit with discontinuous current can be used without increasing the switching loss of the main MOSFET similar to the conventional voltage source gate drive circuit. That is because the rise time and the fall time of the gate voltage on main MOSFET is same time.