Design of FPGA-controlled power electronics and drives using MATLAB Simulink

We present a simple and rapid prototyping technique for Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGAs)-based digital controllers for power electronics and motor drives using MATLAB´s Simulink and HDL Coder design software. The MATLAB/Simulink models are optimized and converted to target independent, specific and traceable Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language (VHDL) code for FPGA programming. An example implementation of the space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) technique is presented, illustrating the design of a generic 3-phase voltage source inverter (VSI). Simulation and co-simulation, system level design, and verification for rapid prototyping of FPGA-based digital controllers will assist power electronics engineers and researchers to develop and prototypes in a relatively short time by eliminating tedious and time-consuming manual coding. This enables increased productivity and facilitates the development of power electronic controllers with more complex control algorithms.