FPGA based development platform for implementation of brushless DC motor control

Development of motor control techniques in last decade improved motor efficiency and wider usage area of BLDC motors. In modern industry one of the most important constraints is the product price. In motor industry there are not many application specific integrated circuits (ASIC) solutions for motor control. One of reasons is very high price of ASIC development and its validation and production. To decrease the development time and time needed for validation a custom FPGA platform can be used. With the prices of FPGA components which are decreasing rapidly, such platform can even become a commercial solution. Modular and flexible design offers the opportunity to use various approaches during the development phase. Such embedded system is not designed for general processing but for specific application which makes it a good starting point in the ASIC development. This paper presents design and implementation of an FPGA based development platform for Brushless DC (BLDC) motor control using Xilinx FPGA - Virtex6. Experimental verification is performed on Hall sensor control application, as on of the most common motor control configurations.