DESIGN Microsemi Introduces Advanced Motor Control Algorithms for SmartFusion cSoCs

The new solution is ideal for safety-critical applications in industrial, avionics, defense and medical markets.

Many systems require control of multiple motors which results in a dedicated micro-controller for each individual motor, said Paul Ekas, vice president of marketing for Microsemi's SoC product group. By implementing these algorithms on SmartFusion devices that combine high-performance hardware acceleration with the easy-to-program ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller, designers can significantly reduce power and system complexity.

Microsemi's award-winning SmartFusion cSoC combines three features crucial for successful implementation of advanced motor control algorithms: an embedded ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller, a high reliability flash-based field programmable gate array plus integrated programmable analog circuitry for motor sensing. This extensive system integration further reduces overall system complexity and operational cost.

The advanced motor control algorithms address DC brushless, AC brushless and three phase motor control applications. These algorithms have been implemented as a combination of extremely fast and efficient hardware subroutines in the FPGA fabric and embedded software on the ARM Cortex-M3.

This high-performance architecture yields significant power reduction benefits and performance improvements by offloading the heavy software processing into dedicated hardware. The reduced processing load on the ARM Cortex-M3 provides more processing headroom to perform key system and application layer control task management.

The advanced motor control algorithms also include:
. Field-oriented control with hall sensors
. Field-oriented control with encoders
. Trapezoidal commutation
. Sinusoidal commutation

The new advanced motor control algorithms are available as reference designs for use on Microsemi's SmartFusion Dual Motor Control Kit and are free for qualified customers.