FPGA Implementation of a Chopper Controller in PV Systems for IoT Applications

Abstract

This work presents the design and simulation of an Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based digital controller for a micro-power photovoltaic (PV) energy harvesting system tailored to Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The proposed system features a DC-DC boost converter with an H-bridge topology, designed to interface effectively with low-power PV sources and deliver regulated output to IoT loads. A constant voltage maximum power point tracking (CV-MPPT) algorithm is implemented to maintain optimal energy extraction under variable irradiance. The controller dynamically adjusts the chopping frequency, duty cycle, and output voltage. Leveraging the parallelism and reconfigurability of FPGAs, a high-speed digital control architecture is developed and synthesised on a Cyclone IV FPGA platform. Compared to conventional microcontroller or DSP-based solutions, this approach offers significantly improved response time, power efficiency, and scalability. The final implementation achieves a chip area of 0.92 mm², a control loop delay of 106 ms, and an overall efficiency of 92.36%, demonstrating its advantages over existing designs in terms of compactness, performance, and energy efficiency.