Design and implementation of FPGA based low power digital PID controllers

In this paper design and implementation of low power Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controller using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is presented. In the present status the embedded control applications requires low power and fast acting PID controllers with a closed loop performance using less resources, resulting in cost reduction. Different types of digital PID controllers are analyzed with the frequency response using Matlab tool. The controller algorithm is synthesized, simulated and implemented using Xilinx Spartan3e XC3S100E board with XilinxISE 9.1i as a tool and synthesized and simulated using Altera Cyclone EP1C12Q240C8 with Quartus II 6.1 as a tool. The results are compared in terms of their power consumption, speed, memory usage, Look Up Tables (LUTs) and number of Multipliers, Adders/Subtractors.

I. Introduction

Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controllers have been widely used over the past five decades due to their simplicity, robustness, effectiveness, and applicability for a broad class of systems. Despite the numerous control design approaches that have appeared in the literature, it is estimated that nowadays PID controllers are still employed in more than 95% of industrial processes [1]. An important feature of this controller is that it does not require a precise analytical model of the system that is being controlled. For this reason, PID controllers have been widely used in robotics, automation, process control, manufacturing, transportation, and interestingly in real time multi tasking applications [2].