Novel Low-Cost Microstepping Driving Technique with Digital Current Estimation

This paper presents a new microstepping driving technique. The proposed approach exploits a digital current estimation algorithm and an integrator circuit to perform a 16 micro steps operation. The proposed solution allows, in an IC implementation, a consistent reduction of the silicon area compared to a conventional analog approach based on a 4 bit sinusoidal DAC. The presented control scheme was verified by experiments and an error analysis was performed.