An Optimization Method of a Digital Active Gate Driver Under Continuous Switching Operation Being Capable of Suppressing Surge Voltage and Power Loss in PWM Inverters

This article proposes a new optimization method and its platform for automatically adjusting the control parameters of a digital active gate driver while operating a pulse-width modulation (PWM) inverter. The proposed optimization method applies the searching parameters for some sectors in an ac current cycle and fixed parameters for the other sectors. This enables us to find the optimal operating points of power devices so as to reduce the surge voltage and switching loss with the consideration of their dependency on the load current. Additionally, the proposed optimization method also can find the operating points while the inverter performs a continuous switching operation. For this reason, the proposed optimization method can be applied to a continuous running test of PWM inverters, for example, in a manufacturing process. The validity of the proposed method and platform was evaluated by using a 10-kW three-phase PWM inverter with digital gate drives. The experimental results confirmed that the proposed optimization method makes it possible to find the optimal operating points for reducing the surge voltage and/or the power loss.