Reconfigurable Platform for Teaching Motor Control Algorithms

A platform for teaching motor control and digital signal processing algorithms is presented. The use of a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) circuit as the base of a control system provides very flexible and powerful means to implement the algorithms. Digital Signal Processor (DSP) usually, used in this kind of applications, is replaced with a soft processor thus the use of C-language is possible with this platform. The platform consists of large FPGA to implement even complex algorithms. The platform also provides fast analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) to get accurate data that can be filtered using digital filters in the FPGA. For teaching purposes ready-made VHDL (Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Description Language) modules exists for the use of students to reduce the complexity to implement functional frequency converter.