To implement power converter control algorithms in an FPGA, it is often required to develop an FPGA-based pulse-width modulation (PWM) module. Therefore, this note presents how to implement a custom PWM modulator in the Xilinx FPGA of the imperix controller (B-Box RCP or B-Board PRO). The presented modulator uses FPGA pulse-width modulation with a triangular…
This note explains how to get started with the implementation of power converter control algorithms in the FPGA of imperix power electronic controllers. The benefit of offloading all or parts of the computations from the CPU to the FPGA is that it often results in much faster closed-loop control systems. First, the FPGA control starter…
This note presents an FPGA control implementation of a grid-tied current-controlled inverter. It combines several control modules presented in different Technical Notes to form a complete converter control, executed entirely in the FPGA of a B-Box RCP controller. Thanks to the FPGA programmability of the B-Box controller, complex control algorithms can be effectively executed at…
This technical note presents an FPGA-based Direct Torque Control (DTC) of a PMSM motor using Vivado HLS, coupled with the possibility to customize the FPGA firmware of a B-Box. This approach increases the responsiveness of the DTC implementation presented in AN004 by porting part of the control logic to the FPGA. Xilinx Vivado High-Level Synthesis (HLS) is…
High-level synthesis (HLS) tools greatly facilitate the implementation of complex power electronics controller algorithms in FPGA. Indeed HLS tools allow the user to work at a higher level of abstraction. For instance, the user can use Xilinx Vitis HLS to develop FPGA modules using C/C++ or the Model Composer plug-in for Simulink to use graphical…
The choice of fixed vs floating-point arithmetic for an FPGA algorithm is a decision that has a significant impact on the FPGA resources usage, computation latency, as well as data precision. This page provides a comparison between fixed-point vs floating-point arithmetic and gives advantages and drawbacks for each approach. Then, it shows how to use…
Control algorithms for power electronics converters often rely on PI controllers executed on the CPU of the controller. That’s the technique used in most of the application notes on this knowledge. However, in some situations, it could be desired to run the control loop on an FPGA (e.g. to offload the CPU, or achieve much…
This technical note shows how an SPI communication link can be established between an FPGA and an external Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC). The development setup will consist of an imperix B-Board PRO evaluation kit and an LTC2314 demonstration circuit. The LTC2314 ADC driver will be developed using VHDL integrated into the user-programmable area (the sandbox) of…
This technical note shows how the implementation of an FPGA-based hysteresis controller can be conducted, starting from the modeling stage, following with automated VHDL code generation with HDL Coder, and finishing with its validation in simulation. As an application example, this note uses the hysteresis current control already shown in TN120. HDL Coder is a MATLAB…
This technical note shows how to build a decoder IP for a Delta-Sigma Modulator and establish communication with such a device through USR ports of the B-Box RCP and B-Board PRO. The corresponding approach uses the user-programmable area inside the FPGA, also known as sandbox. Introduction Delta-Sigma Modulators are a class of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs)…
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