Design of isolated IGBT driving and control circuits for an interleaved boost converter

An IGBT/MOSFET driver circuit works at a low voltage, between 5-15 V of its gate voltage to drive power converter switching devices that work at higher voltages. If there is no isolation between the driver and power converter circuits, any damage that may occur to the power converter circuit at high voltage will damage the driver circuit as well. This paper presents a design of an isolated IGBT/MOSFET driver circuit for an interleaved DC/DC boost converter using a TL494 IC to generate the required pulses for the converter’s circuit. Isolation is done using optocouplers. An IC IR2117 driver is also used to produce smooth rise and fall times for the pulses for each IGBT. The designed driver circuit is modelled using a co-simulation employing Multisim and LabVIEW software and then implemented experimentally with the help of a NI PCI-DAQ 6259. A P-I controller is implemented to regulate the output voltage of the boost converter, as well at the desired set point.