Novel FPGA based controller design platform for DC-DC buck converter using HDL Co-simulator and Xilinx System Generator

This paper proposes smart Field programmable gate array (FPGA) based DC-DC buck converter control system design platforms using Xilinx System Generator and hardware descriptive language (HDL) Co-simulator. In traditional way of FPGA based implementation of control system, interaction occurs between the controller and system only in the final stage of implementation onto the hardware. With that approach faults can be spotted only after the implementation in FPGA and results in loss of design time and extra expenditures. Also extra HDL code to generate stimuli for simulation of the control system incurs time loss and is difficult for complex systems. The proposed Xilinx System Generator and HDL Co-simulator platform based approaches help the designer to make fault diagnosis, complete analysis of the system, evaluation of system performance, and enhancement of the system performance prior to final implementation onto hardware. This results in reduction in design time and faults and also ensures that the designs meet design specifications. In industrial applications where design time is very crucial, reduction in design time and faults help in reducing the expenditures and in turn overall product cost. A comparative evaluation and criteria for selection of approaches is also discussed.