GUI-Based Laboratory Architecture for Teaching and Research in Digital Control of SMPS

Digital control is a powerful modern design technique and important research topic in power electronics, and it is useful to have a simple but flexible platform for experimentation and education purposes. It is shown that a very powerful and easy to use system that can be utilized to control a very diverse range of devices can be easily implemented by using a graphical user interface (GUI) running on a PC to control an FPGA. The FPGA only needs to run a small, modular communication component to interface with the PC and decode commands to perform direct digital hardware control. Since the user has real-time control of the FPGA via the GUI, it is possible to evaluate design and parameter changes in real-time, without reprogramming the FPGA. This makes the proposed platform an ideal tool for educators and researchers alike