Motors and drives power countless industrial processes in production, assembly, packaging, robotics, computer numerical control (CNC), machine tools, pumps, and industrial fans. These motor-driven systems account for more than two-thirds of industrial energy consumption, making their efficient operations vital to factory profits. Replacing traditional control methods with more efficient motor drives, such as variable-speed drives, can provide significant energy savings. Altera's FPGA architectures provide an effective platform for all types of drives.
Designing with Altera® FGPAs in motors and drives gives you the flexibility to integrate and optimize the drive system through the following:
- Design integration: leverage the dual-core ARM® CortexTM-A9 MPCoreTM hard processor, integrate a Nios® II soft embedded processor, and add encoder interfacing, DSP control algorithms, or industrial networking in a single device.
- Performance scaling: achieve higher performance with faster control loops and higher efficiency on different types of motors through parallelism and functional scalability.
- Design flexibility: reuse intellectual property (IP) cores and take advantage of variable-precision digital signal processing (DSP) blocks. Use fixed- or floating-point precision for any part of the control path.
- Deterministic latency: implement motor algorithms and deterministic operations in hardware.
- Functional safety: reduce compliance time and effort. Altera is the first FPGA supplier to obtain qualification of our devices and tools under the Machinery Directive safety standard IEC 61508.
One FPGA Platform, Multiple Designs
Unlike traditional drive technologies based on ASICs, ASSPs, microcontrollers, and DSP devices, a drive system based on a single Altera FPGA platform, as shown in Figure 1, provides a scalable platform that supports diverse drive needs.
Figure 1. "Drive-on-a-Chip": Cyclone V or Cyclone V SoC FPGAs with High-Performance Processors, Motor Control Algorithm, I/O Logic, Industrial Ethernet Protocols, and Safety Elements
Altera FPGAs allow you to leverage multiple processor architectures, such as the Nios II embedded soft processor or the more powerful dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore hard processor. With support for multiple types of operating systems, the latest Industrial Ethernet protocols, digital encoder interfaces, floating-point arithmetic, and device-hardened features such as memory controllers, variable-precision DSP blocks, and transceivers, an FPGA-based motor control system lets you do the following:
- Control various motor types such as a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM), brushless DC motor (BLDC), AC inductor motor, servo motor, and high-precision stepper motor
- Expand to multi-axis control
- Implement parallel control loops in hardware within a range of less than 5 µs
- Design with any Industrial Ethernet protocol such a EtherCAT, PROFINET, EtherNet/IP, or Ethernet Powerlink
Optimized Motor Control Design Flow
Optimizing motor control algorithms and designs requires versatile tools and a practical tool flow. Figure 2 shows how the right tool flow helps model and simulate the system, implement complex algorithms with low latency, integrate the system, and fine-tune the performance to the exact needs of the motor drive.
Figure 2. Optimize Drive Designs with an Intuitive Design Flow
You can get powerful and easy-to-use development tools, such as Quartus® II design software, and system integration tools, such as Qsys and DSP Builder for DSP optimization. With support for model-based environments such as MATLAB/Simulink to model the algorithm, you can build a motor control system that can be directly integrated to the DSP Builder tool for the most optimized Altera-based drive designs. In addition, you can use the familiar tool flow and resources of the ARM-based ecosystem to reduce development time and take advantage of legacy code.
Start your designs more quickly with our reference designs and development kits such as the Cyclone® IV E Industrial Networking Kit (INK). With the FalconEye motor control development kit from EBV Elektronik, you get a versatile Cyclone IV FPGA-based motor control kit optimized for controlling BLDC motors. Or, build a scalable motor control system in a single FPGA with the BeInMotion Kit, our BeMicro SDK-based motor control kit from Arrow Electronics.
Related Links
- SoC FPGA overview
- Cyclone V SoC FPGAs
- Motor drive on a single SoC FPGA
- Embedded processors for Altera FPGAs
- White paper: Optimize Motor Control Designs with an Integrated FPGA Design Flow (PDF)
- White paper: Five Ways to Build Flexibility into Industrial Applications with FPGAs (PDF)
- White paper: Lowering the Total Cost of Ownership in Industrial Applications (PDF)
- White paper: A Flexible Solution for Industrial Ethernet (PDF)
- Video: Four Reasons Why FPGAs Are Right for Motor Control
- Video: Three Ways to Quickly Adapt to Changing Ethernet Protocols
