A Reconfigurable and Extendable Digital Architecture for Mixed Signal Power Electronics Controller

• Published in: IEEE transactions on circuits and systems. II, Express briefs Vol. 65; no. 10; pp. 1480 - 1484
• Main Authors: Wu, Ya-Jie, Lam, Chi-Seng, Wong, Man-Chung, Sin, Sai-Weng, Martins, Rui Paulo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.10.2018; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Active filters; Analog computers; Architecture; Building block; CMOS; Compensators; Computer architecture; Digital computers; digital controller; Electronics; Integrated circuits; mixed signal PE controller; Parallel processing; Programmable controllers; reconfigurable and extendable digital architecture; Reconfiguration; Registers; Software
• ISSN: 1549-7747; 1558-3791
• DOI: 10.1109/TCSII.2018.2860903

This brief presents the design of a reconfigurable and extendable digital architecture for an integrated mixed signal power electronics (PE) controller as it could achieve better performances than the purely digital or analog PE controller. A computer-based configuration software interface for the controller is developed. This brief aims to develop a user-interface design platform that can easily guide the controller function in feature-shared PE applications. Here, we simplify not only the design at the software level allowing controller hardware's swift reconfigurability to save development time, but also allow parallel processing and programmable on-the-fly ability. The proposed digital controller architecture is also easily extendable by adding more building blocks to realize additional PE applications and we designed and fabricated it in 65-nm CMOS. Finally, we tested experimentally the proposed digital controller in power quality compensators to verify its reconfigurability and effectiveness. This digital architecture is fundamental for future mixed signal PE controller integration.