Pulse Generator for Dynamic Performance

Verification of Current Transducers

Jan Gottschlich and Rik W. De Doncker

Institute for Power Electronics and Electrical Drives, RWTH Aachen University
Jägerstraße 17/19
Aachen, Germany
Tel.: +49 (0)241 80-96920
E-Mail: post@isea.rwth-aachen.de
URL: http://www.isea.rwth-aachen.de

Keywords
«Current sensor», «Circuits», «Measurement», «Component for measurements»

Abstract
In this paper a compact low-cost current-pulse generator circuit is presented. This circuit is used to
provide a reference current for the evaluation of the dynamic performance of current transducers. It is
able to generate short current pulses with fast rise times of up to 1 kA/μs and variable amplitudes of up
to 100 A. The functionality is demonstrated by example measurements of different current
transducers.

Introduction
With fast semiconductor devices such as superjunction MOSFETs (metal oxide semiconductors field
effect transistors) and silicon carbide (SiC) or gallium nitride (GaN) devices it is possible to increase
the switching frequency of power electronics in order to reduce the size of passive components while
maintaining low switching losses. Higher switching frequencies can also improve the dynamic
behavior of converters as they allow increasing the control bandwidth. However, control systems as
well as overcurrent protection circuits require a sufficient bandwidth of current transducers to measure
load currents and internal currents of power converters. The bandwidth of these transducers can be a
limit for the implementation of high switching frequencies.

During the development of power electronic converters it can be mandatory to assess the dynamic
performance and transient overload behavior of such current transducers. This requires a current
source which generates reference current signals with a well-defined high peak current and a high
current rise time. Some approaches to generate such current pulses are known, e. g. [1-3], however
some of these pulse sources are complex or require high operating voltages and high stored energy.
Especially the use of high-voltage discharge events to generate fast rising current pulses compromises
safety due to high voltages and high stored energy in the circuit. Circuits for currents in the range of
10 A to 100 A, which is typical for current transducers in medium power applications, are rarely
documented.

Tasks like slew rate and response time comparisons or overload behavior analysis of different current
transducers often do not require a high precision reference current pulse source, especially when
quantitative results are not required. For these and similar applications a compact, low-cost pulse
current source yet capable of generating high current pulses with a high rise time has been designed.

The pulse source presented in this paper is compact, inexpensive and safe to use. It can generate
repetitive short current pulses of up to 100 A with a rising edge current slew rate of up to 1 kA/μs. The
circuit concept is scalable and thus suitable for even higher peak currents. Due to its exchangeable
external current loop, the pulse source can be easily adapted to different current transducer form
factors.

Circuit Concept
The basic operation principle of the pulse current source is based on a modified turn-on trigger pulse
generator for high power thyristor-based devices presented in [4]. Figure 1 depicts the schematic of the
proposed pulse generation circuit.

Figure 1: Pulse generator circuit

The circuit consists of two MOSFET switches S1 and S2, a freewheeling diode D, an inductor L, a
capacitor C with a resistor R in series and a dc source supplying the voltage U. The current transducer
under test (DUT, device under test) is connected to the external current loop.

Figure 2 depicts timing and waveforms of the pulse generation cycle. In idle state switch S1 is turned
off and S2 is turned on to charge the capacitor C while the external current loop is shorted. To prepare
a current pulse S1 is now turned on while S2 remains in on-state. The inductor current iL rises
according to equation 1, where Rpar is the parasitic resistance of the entire current loop, including the
active and passive components.

( )= 1 e (1)

As S2 has a significantly lower resistance and stray inductance than the parallel external current loop,
only a small part of the current iL flows through the external current loop at this time.

When the desired test current amplitude is reached after the time t1, S2 is turned off. The current iL now
commutates to the external current loop. Due to the stray inductance L of the external current loop the
voltage uS2 as given by equation 2 is present across S2 during the commutation process.

( )= (2)

Therefore the maximum current rise time in the external current loop is only limited by the switching
speed and breakdown voltage of S2. S1 is turned off with a delay t2 after S2 has been turned off. The
current iL commutates to the freewheeling diode D. The current decays to zero and S2 can be turned on
again to start the next cycle.
The capacitance C is ideally chosen high enough to minimize the voltage drop caused by the pulse
current. The resistor R limits the current supplied by the dc source during pulse generation and
capacitor recharge. This ensures that the predominant part of the pulse current is supplied by the
capacitor C and limits the power supply peak current.

Figure 2: Current waveforms and switch timing

Implementation
The entire pulse current source is constructed as a two-layer circuit board of 72 x 55 mm size. Figure 3
shows a photo of the realized prototype.

Figure 3: Photograph of the pulse generator circuit board

All components of the pulse generation circuit are located on the right hand side of the circuit board.
The inductor L is realized as an iron powder core inductor of 220 nH inductance with a saturation
current exceeding 100 A. The pulse energy storage capacitor C is implemented as a ceramic capacitor
with low internal resistance (ESR) and inductance (ESL). The switches S1 and S2 are implemented
using International Rectifier IRF6715 MOSFETs with a low stray inductance DirectFET package and
a maximum pulse current rating of 270 A [5]. The external current loop is exchangeable to allow
different types of current transducer to be tested. However, its stray inductance must be minimized to
achieve a high current slope. The tantalum capacitors which are also placed on the right half of the
board are bulk decoupling capacitors and do not directly supply the current pulse. The peak current of
these capacitors is limited by the resistor R to values within their specifications.
The left hand side of the circuit board contains auxiliary circuits and a complex programmable logic
device (CPLD) to generate the desired gate signal timing for the switches S1 and S2. As the current
pulse amplitude is only determined by the signal timing when assuming a constant supply voltage U,
no measurement circuit or closed loop control is required. Different current waveforms are
preprogrammed and can be selected using an onboard switch.
As the pulse current source is intended to generate a reference current for performance evaluation of
current transducers, a high pulse repetition rate is not required. Thus, the pulse repetition rate is set to
25 Hz making the power dissipation negligible while allowing a continuous observation of the current
transducer response. At the nominal supply voltage of 15 V the current drawn by the entire circuit,
including all control logic and auxiliary circuitry, is 35 mA.

Measurements
Figure 4 depicts measured waveforms of a generated current pulse with a current amplitude of
approximately 50 A.

60
40
iDUTin A

20
0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
30

20
uS2 in V

10

0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
4
Control signal

S1
2 S2

-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
Time in μs

Figure 4: Measured current pulse and control signals

The first diagram shows the current iDUT in the external current loop, measured with a SBNC A-2-01
coaxial shunt resistor (Bandwidth: 400 MHz) [6], the second diagram shows the voltage US2 across
switch S2. The third diagram depicts the measured control signals for the switches S1 and S2,
accordingly.

It can be seen that the measured waveform resembles Figure 2. While S1 is closed the current in the
inductor L increases. As a small amount of this current flows through the external loop, although S2 is
closed, a small current rise of iDUT can be observed during this interval. The entire inductor current is
commutated to the external loop when S2 is opened. The desired fast current rise with a slope of
0.7 kA/μs and a 50 A peak current of IDUT can be observed at this time. Due to the stray inductance L
of the external loop which is 35 nH for this setup, a voltage of 25 V is present across S2 during the
current slope. As the used MOSFET has an avalanche breakdown voltage of 25 V, this voltage is
clamped by a temporary avalanche breakdown of the device. This effect, together with the switching
speed of S2 limits the achievable current slope. After the entire current is commutated to the external
loop and S1 is turned off the current iDUT freewheels using the diode D and decays within 12 μs. The
delay which can be observed between the control signals and the generated current waveform is due to
the switching delay of the MOSFET switches and the respective gate drivers.

To test the capability of the current pulse generator to produce pulses with different amplitudes
measurements with different t1-timing settings were done. Figure 5 shows the external loop current
iDUT for four different timing settings.

120
0.100 μs setting
0.225 μs setting
100 0.750 μs setting
1.750 μs setting

80
iDUTin A

60

40

20

0
-5 0 5 10 15 20 25
Time in μs

Figure 5: Different pulse amplitude settings

The amplitude is varied solely by altering the inductor magnetization time t1. It can be seen that the
rise time of the current pulse is not affected by the set peak current.

The current pulse generator was used to measure the response of different current transducers listed in
Table I. This includes laboratory-grade devices such as current clamps, shunts and rogowski coils, but
also low-cost transducers for general purpose industrial applications.
Table I: Tested current transducers

Manufacturer, Type Technology Bandwidth Datasheet

T&M Research Products Shunt Resistor 400 MHz [6]

SBNC A-2-01

Keysight Technologies Current Clamp, 100 MHz [7]

N2783B Closed-loop hall sensor

Power Electronic Measurements Rogowski coil 30 MHz [8]

CWT ultra mini

University Stuttgart Current clamp, 25 MHz [9]

ILA SMZ 200 Closed-loop hall sensor

LEM PCB-mountable, 0.2 MHz [10]

LA 55-P closed-loop hall sensor

Sensitec GmbH PCB mountable, 2 MHz [11]

CMS3050ABA magnetoresistive sensor

The measured response waveforms are depicted in Figure 6. It can be seen that the coaxial shunt, the
N2783B probe and the Rogowski coil show similar performance, especially for the fast rising edge of
the current. However, the coaxial shunt shows the fastest decay of the current compared to the other
transducers. This can be explained by the lower stray inductance L of the coaxial shunt and its
connection to the pulse generator. The SMZ 200 current clamp has a lower slew rate compared to the
N2783A current clamp and can therefore not reproduce the current pulse precisely.

The low-cost industrial current transducers CMS3050 and LA 55-P cannot measure the peak of the
current pulse accurately due to their limited bandwidth. However, both transducer can reproduce the
current decay and do not show any signs of dynamic overload. The CMS3050 transducer has a distinct
response time, which matches the datasheet values with the external filter circuit used for this
measurement [10]. Despite its lower bandwidth, the LA 55-P transducer responds to the current pulse
immediately and can partly reproduce the fast rising edge. This is likely due to the effect, that the
compensation coil of this current transducer acts like a current transformer for high frequencies,
although the bandwidth of the hall sensor compensation circuit is too low to respond to the fast edge.
 60 60
CMS 3050 CMS 3050
LEM LA55-P LEM LA55-P
50 50
N2783B N2783B
CWT Ultra Mini CWT Ultra Mini
40 SBNC A-2-01 40 SBNC A-2-01
SMZ 200 SMZ 200
iDUTin A

iDUTin A
30 30

20 20

10 10

0 0

-5 0 5 10 15 20 25 -1 0 1 2 3 4
Time in μs Time in μs

Figure 6: Comparison of different current transducers (right diagram: magnified view)

Conclusions
A pulse current generator, capable of generating short high current pulses with a fast rising edge
followed by a slowly decaying current was presented in this paper. Contrary to other approaches the
design is focused on generating a current pulse with a fast rising edge. This makes the proposed pulse
current generator suitable to verify the slew rate and response time of current transducers in power
electronics applications and their overload and overload recovery behavior. The chosen circuit
topology allows an easy low-cost implementation and avoids high voltages and continuous high
currents, which makes this pulse generator safe and suitable for mobile operation. The performance of
the constructed pulse generator was demonstrated by measurements. The prototype implementation
was able to achieve peak currents of up to 100 A with a rising edge current slop of 0.7 kA/μs. As an
application example, the response of different current transducers was compared. Future
enhancements of the proposed circuit can include the use of a different S2 switching device to increase
the current slope.

References
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[6] Coaxial shunts A series – SBNC series datasheet, T&M Research Products Inc., 2013.
[7] Keysight N2780B Series AC/DC Current Probes Data Sheet, Keysight Technologies, 2014.
[8] CWT ultra-mini datasheet, Power Electronic Measurements Ltd., 2013.
[9] Current Probe ILA SMZ 200: Operating instructions and technical data, Institute of Power Electronics and
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