Motor Control Solutions

The development of smaller and more powerful motors, along with recent advances in high-energy batteries, has opened new markets to a wide range of motorized products, from home appliances and electric vehicles to entertainment devices and toys. New designs for AC and DC motor control must be highly efficient and consume minimal power in order to provide longer operation without affecting performance. The need to adopt smaller, more cost-effective motors in traditional motor applications is also influencing electronic motor control techniques for the industrial sectors.

The requirement for expensive computer and power electronics has been a significant obstacle to overcome for motor control applications. Tremendous technology improvement in semiconductor processes and integration are helping designers face these challenges.

Performance

• Robust, customizable pulse-width modulation (PWM) enables more precise control algorithms
• Faster more deterministic control loop than software solutions that reduces current ripple and noise
• Immediate response to user I/O (i.e., emergency braking alert)
• Hardware acceleration of control algorithms
• High-speed flash memory provides faster access to lookup tables

One-Chip Integration

• Single-chip solution
  • Increased reliability, smaller form factor, and board space
• Functional integration
  • System manager and motor control in a single chip
  • Data logging and subsystem diagnostic
  • Fusion mixed signal FPGA can support multiple axis motors simultaneously
• SmartFusion FPGA supports multiple types of analog data acquisition such as direct sampling of voltage, current, and temperature
• Single platform supports multiple standards for local and remote communications

Other Technology Solutions Still Apply

• Firm Error Immunity for aviation motors
• Security protects intellectual property
• Low Power modes of operation for battery applications
• Live at Power-Up

Actel's SmartFusion intelligent mixed signal FPGA enables world class motor control solutions. SmartFusion delivers unprecedented integration by combining proven flash-based FPGA fabric, on-chip nonvolatile flash memory, on-chip analog-to-digital resources, and a 100 MHz 32-bit ARM® Cortex™-M3 microprocessor in single low-power device. For the first time, engineers can combine the motor control analog front-end, high-speed flash lookup tables, deterministic algorithm processing capabilities of programmable logic, and high-level 32-bit microprocessor control into a single-chip solution.

Making use of SmartFusion FPGA's integrated 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller running at 100 MHz, on-chip simultaneous sample and hold via multiple analog inputs with dual ADC MUXes, and proven low power ProASIC®3 flash-based FPGA fabric, Actel has partnered with motor control experts at Power & Control Design, Inc. to develop the SmartFusion Motor Control Development Kit, enabling demonstration and benchtop development of world class motor control products.

The SmartFusion Motor Control Kit includes five reference designs addressing four sophisticated closed-loop motor control modes, including trapezoidal and sinusoidal commutation using Hall effect sensor input, sinusoidal with Hall encoder input, sensorless trapezoidal using back-EMF input, and an additional design demonstrating a remote Ethernet connection to control motors in real-time.

The SmartFusion Motor Control Development Kit provides intelligent mixed signal FPGA based solutions that greatly simplify design of intelligent closed-loop motor control products.

SmartFusion Motor Control Development Kit

• Supports control of permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSM, also known as brushless DC or BLDC)
• Includes a variety of motor control schemes detailing hardware/software partition for motor control
• Manage and control up to four motors on an available daughter board from your PC
• Acquire, plot and analyze speed, voltage, and current data using interactive control GUI
• Control Board with SmartFusion A2F200 device
  • Voltage input (5-12 V)
  • Resolver excitation
    • External resolver-to-digital converter that can be configured from the microcontroller subsystem (MSS)
    • Implemented internally using SmartFusion's digital-to-ananlog converter (DAC)
  • LED matrix for each motor
  • Circuitry for fault conditioning
• Plug-in driver board with 1 PMSM motor mounted
  • Layout on board accommodates drivers for up to 4 PMSM motors
  • High voltage driver required to support motors
  • 4x IGBT circuitry
  • 120 V – 240 V power converter
  • Active power factor correction
  • Buck/boost converter to control output voltage
  • One PMSM motor with hall sensor and encoder
• Motor control PC application
  • Each motor controlled and monitored individually
  • Plot graphs of temperature, current, RPM, tongue of motors
  • Export graphs and details of motor into a *.txt file for post-processing and analysis
  • Set user settings for types of motor, number of poles, any motor-specific attributes, PID coefficients, sample rate, position, acceleration, and any other relevant parameter
• Five reference designs including C source code and RTL
  • Trapezoidal using Hall effect sensor feedback
    • Commutation in trapezoidal mode
  • Sinusoidal using Hall effect sensor feedback
    • Commutation starts in trapezoidal mode and switches to sinusoidal when sufficient speed is achieved
  • Sinusoidal with Hall effect encoder feedback
    • Commutation starts in trapezoidal mode and switches to sinusoidal mode on first edge of Hall input using incremental encoder
  • Sensorless trapezoidal
    • Uses back-EMF to generate six-step commutation feedback
  • Ethernet interactive control of motor(s)
    • PC interface for defining velocity, torque and other parameters for up to four motors in real-time over an Ethernet connection

For more information, visit the SmartFusion intelligent mixed signal FPGA web page.

Portable devices using miniature motor control are growing dramatically. They are used in consumer, automotive, medical, and industrial applications, offer a small form factor and substantial cost savings. Actel's low-power IGLOO® family is an ideal solution for the control of miniature motors. When used in brushless DC or stepper motors, Actel's IGLOO family can be implemented to work with sensor or sensorless applications. Actel offers a Miniature Motor Control Board and demonstration platforms that showcase IGLOO low power FPGAs as controllers for miniature motors. IGLOO FPGAs can be used for miniature motor control, which can be implemented using the minimum amount of the FPGA fabric. This leaves plenty of room for the rest of your design, and enables you to use a smaller, low-cost and low-power device.

For more information, visit the IGLOO low power FPGA web page.

SmartFusion Motor Control Development Kit
Intelligent mixed-signal capabilities of Actel SmartFusion FPGA enable a single-chip solution for motor control applications. The Motor Control Development Kit demonstrates the unique advantages of the SmartFusion intelligent mixed signal FPGA and its flexibility in controlling up to four permanent magnet motors on a single platform. The Motor Control Development Kit hardware includes a main motor control board, a motor driver daughter board, and one included PMSM motor, with an optional four-motor configuration.

Miniature Motor Control Daughter Card
Actel offers a demonstration platform that showcases an IGLOO low power FPGA as a controller for miniature brushless DC and stepper motors. The platform consists of a miniature motor control daughter card for Actel IGLOO Icicle Evaluation Kit.

• Intellectual Property — Required intellectual property (IP) depends on the application requirements
  • CorePWM: The essential IP is the PWM. Actel offers this robotic 8-channel PWM IP module, which is ready for plug-n-play development.
  • ARM® Cortex™-M1: The ARM FPGA IP Processor
  • 8051 Cores: 8051 compliant IP
  • CAN IP: Provides easy integration benefits to support CAN interface that is widely deployed in the industrial control applications.
  • SmartFusion IP cores
  • Fusion IP cores