Power Supply Control With FPGAs: Model-Based Design With Matlab, Simulink And DSP Builder

Focus:

Digital control has taken the power supply industry by storm and today almost no one needs to be convinced of its merits. But in the low to medium ranges of power and cost, this digital revolution is largely focused on implementations using microcontrollers, DSPs or ASICs, entirely neglecting programmable logic devices like FPGAs and CPLDs. However, a methodology known as Model-Based Design (MBD) has lowered the barrier to applying FPGA-based digital controllers in power conversion. Correctly applied, MBD reduces design time and the number of errors, while also enabling higher performance. After briefly explaining the benefits of FPGA-based design in power conversion, this article presents a step-by-step example of how to design a basic FPGA-based power supply controller (a synchronous buck) using the MBD methodology. The specific software used to apply this methodology includes MATLAB, Simulink, SimElectronics from MathWorks, and DSP Builder from Altera.

What you’ll learn:

• How to implement a digital power controller in an FPGA using Model-Based Design and popular design tools

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Author & Publication:

Peter Markowski, Envelope Power, Chebeague Island, Maine, How2Power Today, Apr 15 2014

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