New Bus Structure for Programmable Logic Devices Controlling Power Electronics

Development of PLDs (programmable logic device) like large FPGA (field programmable gate array) circuits allow those to be used as modern control platforms for power electronics. The increase of the computational power makes it possible to implement a whole control system inside one chip. This single chip solution needs efficient design methodology to be developed for system implementation. In this paper a new architecture for an FPGA circuit in power electronics control is presented. Motor drive system controlled by one million gate Virtex-II FPGA circuit is presented as a test case

I. Introduction

Embedded control in power electronic systems is traditionally implemented with a processor and an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) [15]. Typically processor is running slower control algorithms with a real time software while ASIC executes fast logic algorithms. Functional changes to these systems require typically changes in the software and also in the hardware. Now when PLDs (Programmable Logic Device) have developed rapidly, the whole control system can be implemented in one circuit with or without a processor inside it [11], [16]. These large control systems are hard to develop and maintain without an efficient architecture inside the chip [12]. The architecture should be flexible and it should also support modular design so that changes in one module do not have any influence on the other modules [10]. In this paper such architecture, called OKITO-architecture, is presented.