A Novel Signal-Power Integrated Gate Driver Design for MV SST Applications

Isolated gate drivers (GDs) for medium-voltage (MV) solid-state transformers (SSTs) must satisfy a set of stringent requirements, including a high insulation rating and high common-mode transient immunity. To simultaneously improve PWM signal quality (duty cycle range and propagation delay) while maintaining compact dimensions, wireless power transfer (WPT) techniques are promising solutions, thanks to their inherent insulation gap and flexible coil shape and structure. In this paper, a new signal-power integrated wireless GD concept is proposed. Unlike existing pulse transformer-based GD solutions, which directly transfer On/Off PWM edge signals from the control side to the MV power side, the proposed approach only transfers DC level and driving power through the shared WPT channel to generate PWM with indexes such as duty cycle and frequency locally at the MV power side, which is a brand-new isolated gate driving concept. The proposed design utilizes multi-frequency resonant networks and a shared PCB WPT channel to transfer DC voltage indexes and gate driving power simultaneously. The design method and experimental results are presented to verify the effectiveness and functionalities of the proposed isolated GD design. © 2026 IEEE.