H-bridge circuit with protection against crossover conduction

Abstract

An H-bridge circuit which includes four power transistors (an npn pull-down and a pnp pull-up for each of the output terminals). Two control circuits are connected to drive these transistors in a complementary crossover configuration, so that each control circuit can turn on the pull-up transistor on one side of the load and the pull-down transistor on the opposite side of the load. Each of the power transistors is paralleled (base-to-base) by a smaller transistor which provides a scaled current output (proportional to that of the corresponding power transistor) to the opposite control circuit. The control circuit includes static current-thresholding disable logic, which prevents turn-on until the currents through the opposite power devices have declined to threshold levels. Thus, as long as either control circuit is driving one of the pull-up transistors into in the on-state, the other control circuit will not be able to turn on the pull-down transistor which is in series with the active pull-up transistor. This efficiently prevents any condition of unlimited crowbar current, without adding any excess delay or causing any high-impedance condition at the output.