Implementation of a Wireless Controlled Gate Driver

A wireless controlled and powered gate driver system that can be used in environments with higher isolation requirements is proposed. In this system, two antennas are employed: one for wireless control signal transmission and the other for wireless energy/power transfer. The dedicated antennas are used to ensure sufficient wireless energy/power transfer for the gate driver stage. On-off keying (OOK) modulation is adopted for pulse width modulation (PWM) control signal modulation, owing to its simple modulation and demodulation schemes. At the receiving end, a voltage doubler and RC filter are used to demodulate the modulated PWM control signal. The demodulated PWM control signal can control the gate driver stage to drive a power switch. The gate driver stage is implemented with TSMC T25HVG2 complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. In this paper, the wireless controlled part of the proposed system is tested and demonstrated. A 10-kHz PWM control signal is modulated with a 13.56-MHz RF carrier and sent through a pair of 13.56-MHz monopole antennas. At the receiving end, the modulated PWM control signal is demodulated successfully. The gate driver stage is able to drive the 2000-pF capacitive loading with rise/fall times of less than 1 μs.