A Flexible and Inexpensive FPGA-Based Power Electronics and Drives Laboratory

Ted K.A. Brekken Ned Mohan

University of Minnesota University of Minnesota
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
200 Union St. S.E., Minneapolis, MN, 55455 200 Union St. S.E., Minneapolis, MN, 55455
Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]

Abstract— As power electronics converters become more

A. Drives Board
flexible and their control becomes more sophisticated, it is This board has been developed by the authors, and is
becoming more important for young engineers to learn to use available for purchase through an external vendor [2]. The
modern digital control tools, such as FPGAs. This paper Drives Board has two 3-phase four-quadrant inverters. The
presents a flexible, inexpensive laboratory setup that can be inverters can be used to drive a passive load, a
configured for exploring a number of power converter motor/generator, or additional magnetics and rectification (to
topologies, controlled in both open loop and closed loop. In
realize an isolated forward or full bridge converter, for
addition to driving passive loads, the setup can be used to
demonstrate DC motor torque, speed, and position control, as example). The two inverters can be controlled
well as variable speed 3-phase AC motor control. simultaneously and independently, allowing control of two
motors (generator and driver). In addition to the inverters,
I. GOALS AND OBJECTIVES the board contains over-voltage and current protection
circuitry, and transducers for measuring phase currents and
The goal of the work is to develop an inexpensive, the DC link voltage. The DC link voltage is 42 Volts, and is
powerful, easy to use, and flexible setup for teaching power provided by an external bench supply.
electronics and electric drives. The system will demonstrate
the operation of a variety of converter topologies and B. Interface Board
switching schemes, as well motor position, speed, and torque This board has also been developed by the authors, and
control. will be available through an external vendor. The purpose of
the Interface Board is to provide level shifting and ADC
II. SYSTEM OVERVIEW conversion for the FPGA board. Its connectors are designed
The proposed setup is composed of four main parts, as to plug directly in to the FPGA Board.
shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2. The heart of the system is C. FPGA Board
the inexpensive Xilinx® Spartan™ 3 FPGA board [1]. The
The FPGA Board is a Xilinx® Spartan™ 3 board that
FPGA is used to control an inverter board that can be used to
comes with Xilinx’s® inexpensive Starter Kit. The FPGA
drive a motor or passive load in both open loop and closed
Board generates the Drives Board switching signals, based
loop. The setup is rated for 150 Watts, at 42 Volts for safety.
on open loop control or on feedback from an encoder or one
of four analog to digital converter channels on board the
Interface Board.
D. Load
The load can be anything that can be driven by a 1, 2, or
3-phase inverter, such as a resistive passive load, rectifier,
transformer, DC motor, or a 3-phase AC motor. A set of
small motors with optical encoders have been designed
specifically for this kit, and are available through an external
FPGA vendor [3].
Board
E. Full bridge Board
A full bridge board has also been developed (not shown).
The board has a transformer with rectification diodes and
snubbers on the secondary. The board also includes a small
Interface load, with external jacks for adding more load.
Load Drives Board Board
Fig. 1: Setup
 Fig. 2: System overview

phase A
III. SYSTEM CONTROL AND PROGRAMMING 40

Volts
20
For user control, real time input to the system can be 0
realized through a set of slide switches and push buttons built 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
time (seconds) -5

on to the Spartan™ 3 board. For example, these switches and phase B

x 10

buttons can be used to increase or decrease the PWM duty Volts 40

ratio, switch the PWM generating scheme (e.g. from 20

0
triangular to sawtooth), switch from open loop to closed loop 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
time (seconds)
operation, or change any number of variables in real time.
-5
x 10
phase A - phase B
Monitoring and user feedback can be displayed by using a 4 40
Volts

digit LED display built into the board. 20

0
The configuration of the FPGA is defined by Verilog 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
HDL. The Xilinx® Starter Kit comes with programming time (seconds)
x 10
-5

software and hardware, including a text-based programming

Fig. 3: Symmetrical triangular PWM switching
environment and simulation tools. The Verilog
programming can be handled by the course instructor or B. Phase shift modulation
assistant, and need not necessarily be visible to the student. It Figure 4 demonstrates phase shift modulation switching.
may also be possible to program the FPGA using Xilinx® In this case, adjusting a control signal by the buttons and
System Generator, a block-based graphical programming switches on the FPGA board causes one of the inverter phase
tool that ties into Matlab/Simulink®. voltages to shift in phase delay relative to the other. This
The FPGA code can be stored on an on-board ROM chip, produces a bipolar output that can be rectified, thus
such that it does not have to be downloaded every time the demonstrating controllable DC-DC conversion.
system is turned on.
The authors will make available any Verilog code for phase A

developed experiments 40
Volts

20
0
IV. EXPERIMENTS 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
time (seconds) -5
A large number of experiments are possible. The phase B
x 10

following are proposed by the authors for an undergraduate 40

power electronics course.
Volts

20
0
A. Single-phase bi-polar DC-DC and DC-AC conversion 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
by symmetrical PWM time (seconds)
x 10
-5

phase A - phase B
One of the most common voltage conversion switching 50

schemes is symmetrical PWM switching. Figure 3 shows the

Volts

0
output of phases A and B of an inverter on the Drives Board, -50
and the difference, A – B. Students can observe these 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
time (seconds)
1.4 1.6 1.8
-5
2
x 10
waveforms while varying the duty ratio to control the speed
and torque of a DC motor, for example. Fig. 4: Phase shift modulation
 2.5
C. DC-DC conversion with a full bridge converter
2
Figure 5 demonstrates bipolar voltage switching used for
1.5
the full bridge board. In this switching scheme, two inverter
legs are switched diagonally and alternately, producing a 1

bipolar AC voltage at the output, and across the full bridge 0.5
primary. This AC voltage is rectified at the secondary,

Amps
0
providing controllable DC-DC conversion. The Full bridge
Board demonstrates rectification and isolation. -0.5

-1
phase A

40 -1.5
Volts

20
-2
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
-2.5
time (seconds) -5 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025
x 10
phase B time (seconds)

40 Fig. 7: 3-phase current into a brushless DC motor

Volts

20
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 E. Closed loop DC motor speed and current control
time (seconds) -5
x 10
phase A - phase B The Interface Board is equipped with a 4 channel analog to
50
digital converter for reading the voltage from the current
Volts

0 transducers on the Drives Board. These signals can be used

-50 for closed loop current control, as demonstrated in Figure 8
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
time (seconds) -5
x 10 1.6

Fig. 5: Full bridge or bipolar voltage switching 1.4

1.2

D. 3-phase DC-AC conversion for driving an AC motor 1

The Drives Board has two, three-phase inverters. Figure 6
0.8
shows the 3-phase PWM output used to drive a 3-phase
Amps

brushless DC or induction motor. The sinusoidal outputs are 0.6

generated using a sine lookup table stored in ROM on the

0.4
FPGA board. The magnitude and frequency are fully
controllable, and can be tied together to create V/f control for 0.2

induction motors. 0
Figure 7 shows the 3-phase current into the motor. This is
easily observable on an oscilloscope by simple BNC cable -0.2
-0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8
connection to the current transducers on the Drives Board. time (seconds)

phase A
Fig. 8: Closed loop current control, step change in reference current
40
The Interface Board also has an isolated encoder interface
Volts

20
0 that can be used for reading the speed and position of the
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
time (seconds)
2.5 3 3.5
-5
4
motors. By wrapping a speed or position control loop around
x 10
phase B an inner current control loop, full control of a DC motor can
40 be demonstrated.
Volts

20
0 V. CONCLUSION
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
time (seconds) -5
x 10 An inexpensive and flexible setup for teaching power
phase C
electronics and electric drives is presented. The setup is
40
easily programmable by the user, and can be used for
Volts

20
0 demonstrating single-phase DC-DC and DC-AC conversion,
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 in addition to 3-phase DC-AC conversion. The setup can
time (seconds) -5
x 10 also be used for advanced control of DC and AC motors. The
setup includes current transducers, analog to digital
Fig. 6: 3-phase PWM
converters, and optical encoder interfaces for closed loop
control of electric drives and power and electronics.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge the Office of
Naval Research for providing funding for the project.

REFERENCES
[1] Xilinx® http://www.xilinx.com.
[2] HiRel Systems http://www.hirelsystems.com.
[3] Motorsoft
http://motorsoftmotors.com/small_dynamometer_kit_to__test.htm.