Design Article

Designing high-performance and power-efficient motor control systems

Charlie Ice and Bilal Akin, Texas Instruments

7/2/2009 4:03 PM EDT

Today's microcontrollers (MCUs) bring even greater precision, power efficiency and reduced cost to a wide range of applications, including:

White goods and appliances with blowers and compressors such washers and refrigerators
HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) systems
Industrial servo drives used for motion control, power supply inverters and robotics
Automotive control systems, including power steering, anti-lock brakes and suspension controls

TI understands the challenges developers face in designing these high-performance motor control systems. Manufacturers seek to introduce advanced control algorithms to differentiate their products, and increasing government regulation requires more effi cient power consumption and reduced EMI.

To aid developers in meeting these diverse challenges, TI offers the TMS320C2000 Piccolo MCU series. Piccolo MCUs have an optimized architecture integrating specialized peripherals that:

Enable the use of real-time algorithms for more precise and accurate control
Yield better power effi ciency and control through power factor correction (PFC)
Support control of multiple motors with a single chip
Simplify design through sensorless control
Reduce system complexity and cost