A DSP and FPGA based integrated controller development solutions for high performance electric drives

Modern drive control algorithms require advanced hardware and software platforms suitable for fast, efficient and reliable implementations. The development process includes in most cases the following engineering steps: off-line software simulations, hardware design and software implementation in a target system. This paper presents the general requirements connected with microprocessor-based digital control systems for drive control applications. An integrated and flexible hardware and software environment for electric drives control is described. The hardware part of the system includes flexible stand-alone boards and PC-cards set based on the digital signal processors (DSP) family and advanced field programmable gate arrays (FPGA). The flexibility of FPGAs provides multiprocessor and open architecture interface. The PC-based simulation environment offers hardware-in-the-loop options and extended data acquisition functions. After simulation and evaluation procedures the software structure of the controllers can be transfered into the stand-alone DSP board ready for commercial application. The proposed integrated system is very useful in the high-performance AC drives and double-fed machine controller designs. Currently, the project of the DSP controller for the voltage source inverter with the power range above 100 kW is under way in the Gdansk Branch of the Electrotechnical Institute. Several simulation and experimental results are presented and summarised.