Research of an On-Line Measurement Method for High-power IGBT Collector Current

Abstract

The on-line measurement of high-power IGBT collector current is important for the hierarchical control and short-circuit and overcurrent protection of its driver and the sensorless control of the converter. The conventional on-line measurement methods for IGBT collector current are not suitable for engineering measurement due to their large-size, high-cost, low-efficiency sensors, current transformers or dividers, etc. Based on the gate driver, this paper has proposed a current measuring circuit for IGBT collector current. The circuit is used to conduct non-intervention on-line measurement of IGBT collector current by detecting the voltage drop of the IGBT power emitter and the auxiliary emitter terminals. A theoretical analysis verifies the feasibility of this circuit. The circuit adopts an operational amplifier for impedance isolation to prevent the measuring circuit from affecting the dynamic performance of the IGBT. Due to using the scheme for integration first and amplification afterwards, the difficult problem of achieving high accuracy in the transient-state and on-state measurement of the voltage between the terminals of IGBT power emitter and the auxiliary emitter (u Ee ) has been solved. This is impossible for a conventional detector. On this basis, the adoption of a two-stage operational amplifier can better meet the requirements of high bandwidth measurement under the conditions of a small signal with a large gain. Finally, various experiments have been carried out under the conditions of several typical loads (resistance-inductance load, resistance load and inductance load), different IGBT junction temperatures, soft short-circuits and hard short-circuits for the on-line measurement of IGBT collector current. This is aided by the capacitor voltage which is the integration result of the voltage uEe. The results show that the proposed method of measuring IGBT collector current is feasible and effective.

A self-adaptive blanking time circuit for fast IGBT de-saturation short-circuit protection

“…The third one is based on collector current detection. The collector current could be measured by shunt resistors [15], current sense-IGBT [16], the parasitic inductance of IGBT [17,18], Hall sensor, Rogowski coil [19], and current transducer [20]. Shunt resistors are only suitable for low power applications due to the additional power loss, and its accuracy would be affected by parasitic inductance and temperature.…”