A fully-integrated GaN driver IC with adjustable ringing suppression for LiDAR

—Aiming to resolve the inherent trade-off between ringing amplitude and gate edge transition rate encountered in conventional gate driver circuits, this paper presents a fully-integrated GaN gate driver IC with adjustable ringing suppression for laser detection and ranging (LiDAR) applications. The proposed solution employs a dual-channel pulse transmission architecture with a 5-bit fine-grained control of signal propagation delays, to suppress gate ringing while sustaining rapid edge transitions. Implemented in a 180-nm CMOS technology, the proposed driver IC exhibits a good balance on edge transition and overshoot voltage without any external tuning resistor. The measured edge time of the proposed driver circuit is less than 4 ns without any overshoot, which is more than 8 ns based on commercial driver IC of LMG 1025. When the edge time of the commercial counterpart is reduced to 4 ns by reducing the external tuning resistor, its overshoot is higher than 40 %. Moreover, these excellent characteristics are achieved at a lower driving current.