US Patent 11539359 Monitoring safe operating area (SAO) of a power switch

This disclosure is directed to circuits and techniques for protecting a power switch when the power switch is turned ON. A driver circuit may detect whether the power switch is in a desaturation mode or an overcurrent state based on a signal at a detection pin, and disable the power switch in response to detecting that the power switch is in the desaturation mode or the overcurrent state. In addition, the driver circuit may detect whether the power switch is trending towards a safe operating area (SOA) limit of the power switch based on a rate of change of the signal, and disable the power switch in response to detecting that the power switch is trending towards the SOA limit.