“Development of a CPLD based novel open loop stepper motor controller for high performance using VHDL”

Abstract

In motion control systems, stepper motors are widely used and the stepper motor driver is mainly implemented using a DSP (Digital Signal Processor). As the IC industry boomed over the recent decade, large amounts of data process more and more fast in digital system. Because of this, the SOC (system on chip) and CPLD (complex programmable logic device) are popular with designers. However, when mass production is needed, CPLD (complex programmable logic device) based drivers are preferred since the CPLD based design is compatible with conversation to an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). Previous studies proposed CPLD based drivers but the quality is still limited because of the difficulty of handling complex computations in the CPLD. Nowadays, with the improvement of CPLD techniques, it is possible to perform various computations in the CPLD & FPGA so it can be used instead of the DSP in motor driver design. This paper presents an open loop driver of stepper motor controller based on the CPLD. This driver can perform stable, precise control and is responsive. The experimental results verify the performance of the control algorithm.