A methodology to design custom hardware digital controllers for switching power converters

Digital controllers are becoming an important alternative to the traditional analog solutions employed for controlling switching power converters. Among digital controllers, microprocessor-based implementations (such as DSPs) are the most usual ones. However, custom hardware implementations (FPGAs and ASICs) are obtaining special attention for their advantages in some applications, derived from their concurrency and high processing speed. These solutions are still less usual because of two main drawbacks: lack of knowledge by the designers and no methodology to follow. This work focuses on the second point, proposing a methodology to design custom hardware controllers for switching power converters.