Simulation-based weight factor selection and FPGA prediction core implementation for finite-set model based predictive control of power electronics

In this paper a specific application is considered: the combined output current and capacitor voltage control of a 4-level flying-capacitor converter (FCC). This inverter topology possesses important advantages, but the control is also challenging. The high computational burden of MBPC is often restrictive for a good implementation. In this paper the implementation in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) of an efficient prediction and optimization calculation core for finite-set MBPC is discussed. The core is fully implemented in programmable digital logic and a good performance is obtained by exploiting the strong points of the FPGA: parallelism and pipe-lining. The calculation core can be used in three applications: for hardware co-simulations, for hardware acceleration with processor-based implementations and for full FPGA implementations. Experimental results obtained with an FPGA implementation are presented.