Development and validation of a general-purpose ASIC chip for the control of switched reluctance machines

A general-purpose application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chip for the control of switched reluctance machines (SRMs) was designed and validated to fill the gap between the microcontroller capability and the controller requirements of high performance switched reluctance drive (SRD) systems. It can be used for the control of SRM running either in low speed or in high-speed, i.e., either in chopped current control (CCC) mode or in angular position control (APC) mode. Main functions of the chip include filtering and cycle calculation of rotor angular position signals, commutation logic according to rotor cycle and turn-on/turn-off angles (θon/θoff), controllable pulse width modulation (PWM) waveforms generation, chopping control with adjustable delay time, and commutation control with adjustable delay time. All the control parameters of the chip are set online by the microcontroller through a serial peripheral interface (SPI). The chip has been designed with the standard cell based design methodology, and implemented in the central semiconductor manufacturing corporation (CSMC) 0.5 μm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process technology. After a successful automatic test equipment (ATE) test using the Nextest’s Maverick test system, the chip was further validated through an experimental three-phase 6/2-pole SRD system. Both the ATE test and experimental validation results show that the chip can meet the control requirements of high performance SRD systems, and simplify the controller construction. For a resolution of 0.36° (electrical degree), the chip’s maximum processable frequency of the rotor angular position signals is 10 kHz, which is 300,000 rev/min when a three-phase 6/2-pole SRM is concerned.