Graphical System Design: A Bridge to Digital Power

by Gustavo Castro, Staff Analog Engineer, and Luke Schreier, Product Marketing Manager, National Instruments, Austin, TX , Power Electronics Technology, Mar 01 2007

Focus:
Digital power control can address performance challenges that are difficult to satisfy with analog control. This article illustrates this point by presenting a power supply developed in a PXI module format. The challenge in this case was limited space, limited power dissipation, and requirements for tightly regulated output voltages and low noise. The article discusses how these requirements were met using a multistage, digitally controlled design employing switched-mode and linear regulation. The control algorithm was implemented on an FPGA, and as the authors explain, National Instruments' LabVIEW FPGA was used to design and simulate the algorithm using hardware-in-the-loop simulation and then deploy it on silicon. This approach allows for a graphical system design process and does not require any knowledge of VHDL programming. The article includes discussion of how the control algorithm was developed for the PXI power supply design and how requirements such as transient response were met. The flexibility of this approach in allowing rapid design changes and simulation is discussed.

What you’ll learn:

• How to use LabView FPGA to perform simulation and hardware-in-the-loop testing of digitally controlled power supply designs
• How to implement digital power control using FPGAs

Notes:
This article touches on the topic of linear post regulation since it is applied in the PXI power supply design. For more articles on this topic in the How2Power Design Guide, do a search of the Power Supply Function category, selecting the Voltage Regulators subcategory.

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