One chip controller design for actuator's power driving circuit using FPGA

The piezoelectric material is being used widely for actuators due to its large power density with simple structure. It can generate larger force than the conventional actuators with same size. Furthermore, response time of piezo actuators is very short, and thus, it can be used for very fast system applications with compact size. To control the piezoelectric actuator, we need analog signal conditioning circuits as well as digital microcontrollers. Conventional microcontrollers are not equipped with analog parts and thus the control system becomes bulky compared with the small size of the piezoelectric devices. To overcome these weaknesses, we are developing one-chip micro controller that can handle analog and digital signals simultaneously using mixed signal FPGA technology. We used the SmartFusion™ FPGA device. It gives more flexibility than traditional fixed-function microcontrollers with the excessive cost of soft processor cores on traditional FPGAs. In this paper we introduce the design of one chip controller using mixed signal FPGA, SmartFusion™[1] device. To demonstrate its performance, we implemented a PI controller for power driving circuit with piezoelectric actuator in the FPGA fabric.