High-Power Driver Package (HPDP) with OBC-HYPER-POLAR
- September 29, 2026
- CAVU Aerospace UK
OBC-Hyper-Polar has several peripheral boards that interface with main OBC & can extend interface capability, manage reading from temperature & pressure sensors, drive stepper motors, heaters, solenoids, Aux loads etc.
In some cases, we had implemented High power driver package with have EMI isolated signal & power cards implemented as add-on card to cover projects requirements. Here’s some block diagrams & detail about protection system of High-Power Driver Package implemented as OBC peripherals.
One add-on set, every current class: 8 solenoid channels at 0.25–0.75 A, 10 auxiliary channels at 7 A continuous / 10 A peak (relays, heaters, devices), 4 TVC actuator channels at 25 A — from a quarter-amp valve to a 25 A actuator on the same two cards.
(Could be increased to any number of outputs)
Multi-hundred-amp class: 100 A on the 36 V bus plus 70 A on the 24 V bus, carried on 3 mm copper busbars and heavy-copper PCB, with sub-watt losses per bar.
Every channel individually protected: an eFuse controller per channel with a ≈ 1 µs short-circuit trip, programmable overload timer, under-voltage lockout and thermal latch with remote sensing of the FET bank.
Controlled turn-on for capacitive loads: a precharge stage starts a 25 A actuator at a resistor-set 60 A, independent of the load capacitance, and the main FET bank closes into a charged output with no inrush — verified against a 1100 A uncontrolled start.
Reverse-polarity immunity without a diode drop: an ideal-diode stage blocks a reversed supply completely (protected side stays at 0 V) and isolates the loads from a collapsing source in ≈ 7 µs, at 4–5 W loss for 100 A.
Compact EMI filtering: ceramic-only, ≤ 2.5 mm high, no magnetics — 24 / 34 / 44 dB at 1 / 3 / 10 kHz; a 60 A channel start moves the bus by only 2 V.
Power and sensing in one package: a dual 16-channel simultaneous-sampling ADC for pressure and analog sensors alongside a 16-channel 1 MSPS health ADC — per-channel current for all 22 outputs, bus voltage and temperatures.
Direct, deterministic control from the OBC-HYPER-POLAR: one FPGA enable per power channel through sacrificial buffers, SPI to the ADCs, I2C to the sensors; a channel can never turn on without a driven command.
Fail-safe by construction: enables default off during FPGA configuration, brown-out or a missing card; the power stage cannot back-power the OBC; buffers are the only thing between the FPGA and the high-voltage board.
Configurable at assembly, not by redesign: start current, protection thresholds, turn-off behaviour, release time, filter fit and grounding policy are fitted values set from a short interface questionnaire — the same boards serve different loads and buses.
Verified before hardware: SPICE with vendor device models for the FET banks, ideal-diode controller and high-side switches, harness and busbar parasitics included; every figure in the deck comes from a netlist that can be re-run.
Built for the environment: hermetic and ceramic passives only, 18 mm height envelope, floating enclosure with an integrator-selectable chassis provision, ECSS EMC target, first-build measurement plan already defined.
We provide option sheet for high-power driver packages & all users need to do is to fill it in with number & part number of solenoids, Stepper motor, control algorithm if this is micro-step, AUX loads, etc to be able to find best fit for mission requirements.
