Texas Instruments' DRV8304 device is an integrated gate driver for three-phase brushless DC (BLDC) motor applications for 12 V and 24 V DC rails. These applications include field-oriented control (FOC), sinusoidal current control, and trapezoidal current control of BLDC motors. The device integrates three current-sense amplifiers (CSA) for sensing the phase currents of BLDC motors for optimum FOC and current-control system implementation. The AUTOCAL feature automatically calibrates the CSA offset error for accurate current sensing.

The device is based on smart gate drive (SGD) architecture to eliminate the need for any external gate components, such as resistors and Zener diodes, while fully protecting the external FETs. The SGD architecture optimizes dead time to avoid any shoot-through conditions, providing flexibility in decreasing electromagnetic interference (EMI) by gate slew-rate control, and protects against any gate-short conditions through V_GS hand-shaking and dead time insertion. Strong pulldown current also prevents any dv/dt gate turn on.

Various PWM control modes (1x, 3x, 6x, and independent) are supported for simple interfacing to control circuits that can be powered by the 30 mA, 3.3 V internal regulator. These modes decrease the number of output peripherals of the controller for the specific motor-control requirements and provide flexibility of control. The device also has a 1x mode for sensored trapezoidal control of the BLDC motor by using the internal block-commutation table. This device can also be configured to drive multiple loads, such as solenoids, in independent mode.