Realization of a Motion Control IC for X-Y Table Based on Novel FPGA Technology

The novel field-programmable-gate-array (FPGA) technology is able to combine an embedded processor and an application intellectual property to be a system-on-a-programmable-chip developing environment. Therefore, this paper presents a motion control IC for the X-Y table under this novel FPGA technology. The proposed motion control IC has two modules. One module performs the functions of the motion trajectory and two position/speed controllers for the X-Y table. The other module performs the functions of two current vector controllers of permanent-magnet synchronous motor drives. The former is implemented by software using a Nios H embedded processor due to the complicated control algorithm and low-sampling-frequency control (motion trajectory and position control: less than 1 kHz). The latter is implemented by hardware in the FPGA owing to the requirements of high-sampling-frequency control (current loop: 16 kHz; PWM circuit: 4-8 MHz) but simple computation. As a result, the hardware/software codesign technology, can make the motion controller of the X-Y table more compact, flexible, perform better, and less costly.