Dead Time Control with FPGA for Electric Vehicle 3 Phases Inverter Application

This article presents a novel approach to perform dead-time control using a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) on a 6-channel Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) signal generated by a microcontroller. Dead time is a critical parameter in inverter circuits to prevent shoot-through currents and ensure proper operation. An inverter control board was designed with a microcontroller for generating PWM signals and an FPGA for controlling PWM dead time. The microcontroller generates PWM signals with a variable duty cycle and fixed dead time. The FPGA checks the PWM dead time to ensure that the switching elements do not turn on at the same time. The FPGA adds a delay to the PWM signal if the dead time of the PWM signal generated by the MCU is less than the predefined limit.