SoC FPGA Hardware vs. Microcontrollers in Electric Induction Motor Drive Performance

Abstract

Today there are more electric vehicles on the road than ever, and we are on the cusp of finalizing autonomous driving.  The vehicles need to look out for pedestrians, hazards, and make quick decisions. Modern electric drive trains can use a combination of FPGAs for data processing and communication, digital signal processors (DSPs) for motor drive signals. In this paper, a study on the single-phase induction motor was carried out to determine whether the SoC can drive a single-phase induction motor more efficiently than the microcontroller. Also to determine whether or not these systems on chips have a place in electric motor drives. The Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation (SPWM) output signal from Xilinx ZYNQ SoC FPGA and Atmel ATmega328p microcontroller are compared under the same switching frequency and duty cycles. The SoC was configured using Verilog and the microcontroller was programmed in C. A hardware test environment was set up with a power source, H-bridge, transformer, and filter capacitor. Measurements taken included the motor power usage at no load and full load where the motor is in lockdown (unable to move). Results showed the SoC to drive the motor more efficiently and quieter than the microcontroller. The SoC was significantly more expensive than the microcontroller and required much more power to operate. More experiments with better matched chips in terms of I/O, clock speed, and price are needed to determine whether FPGA fabric within a SoC can significantly drive a motor more efficiently. Regardless, SoCs do offer high flexibility, hardware acceleration for neural networks, and a single development environment for both software and hardware blocks.