Implementing Controller Strategies in FPGA

Abstract

In todays industrial applications there is an increasing demand for good control algorithms and implementions. This may be because of increased competition leading to smaller economic margins, safety reasons or even environmental reasons etc. With such demands comes the need for faster and more efficient hardware. Unfortunately, even though CPU-speed has more or less sky-rocketed the last decades, using such solutions for a typical embedded system is not very cost efficient, practical or robust. Thus, many embedded systems now a days use complete microcontrollers, such as the ATMEL AVR-chips. These however, run on far slower clock speeds than pure CPUs, and are not capable of performing the calculations needed for real-time controlling using for example an MPC controller. One way of getting around the performance issue, could be to construct the controller entirely in hardware, designed specifically for the task at hand. This paper will look at how this is possible to accomplish by using an FPGA, and how much performance gain it is possible to achieve on this platform.