RCP Tests for Industrial Drive Controllers

Developing and validating controller algorithms

Application Areas

  • Validating the algorithms for industrial drive controllers
  • Easy adaptations to different motors

Key Points

  • Convenient implementation of new functions developed with Simulink® on the RCP platform at the click of a button
  • FPGA-based I/O interfaces with convenient Simulink blocksets, e.g., the RTI Electric Motor Control Blockset
  • User-programmable FPGA for even the fastest control loops < 20 µs
  • XSG AC Motor Control Solution with ready-to-use FPGA components for the fast and convenient development of FPGA-based electric motor control algorithms
  • Integration of your FPGA code into existing pre-defined FPGA configurations
  • Easy access to all variables, I/O and bus signals of the real-time application during run time with ControlDesk

The RTI Electric Motor Control Blockset, an extension of Real-Time Interface (RTI), is a user-friendly software interface which provides a link between your real-time hardware platform MicroLabBox and the development software MATLAB®/Simulink/Stateflow® from MathWorks. The blockset provides access to the electric motor control I/O functionalities of MicroLabBox and lets you configure these easily and conveniently. Simulink-based control models can be easily connected with the required I/O interfaces and then be tested on MicroLabBox in a real environment with various sensors and actuators.

The included blocks enable you to:

  • Access and configure dedicated I/O functions for multichannel PWM and block-commutated PWM outputs, Hall sensor inputs as well as incremental encoder, resolver, EnDat, and SSI interfaces. This lets you measure the rotor position of a motor, rotor speed, or both, and generate the required output signals.
  • Implement control strategies for electric motors with up to 6 phases and 16 pole pairs
  • Control two or more independent electric motors at the same time
  • Combine two sensors to extrapolate the rotor position of the motor
  • Generate events and external triggers for algorithm execution triggered by specified motor positions

MicroLabBox is equipped with a freely programmable FPGA (Xilinx® Kintex®-7 XC7K325T FPGA) for fast signal preprocessing and for outsourcing controllers directly to the FPGA. Whenever your project requires sample times shorter than 20 µs, the FPGA comes into play.
For convenient FPGA programming, a fully model-based tool chain is available. The FPGA controller model can be developed in MATLAB/Simulink with the dSPACE FPGA Programming Blockset and the Xilinx® Vitis™ Model Composer HDL Library for DSP blocksets. dSPACE also offers the XSG AC Motor Control Library, which provides preconfigured function blocks for all major electric motor features such as PWM generation, Hall, encoder, resolver, EnDat, and SSI sensor processing, and angular computation. With these tools, it is possible to easily combine processor- and FPGA-based control loops for even the most demanding prototyping tasks.

Drive innovation forward. Always on the pulse of technology development.

Subscribe to our expert knowledge. Learn from our successful project examples. Keep up to date on simulation and validation. Subscribe to/manage dSPACE direct and aerospace & defense now.

Enable form call

At this point, an input form from Click Dimensions is integrated. This enables us to process your newsletter subscription. The form is currently hidden due to your privacy settings for our website.

External input form

By activating the input form, you consent to personal data being transmitted to Click Dimensions within the EU, in the USA, Canada or Australia. More on this in our privacy policy.