Distributed ECU System Design for High Speed and High Precision Control of a Marine Engine

Abstract

Efficient control of a marine engine requires an engine control unit (ECU) system that handles fast and precise signal processes for in-coming and out-going signals from fast running engines. In order to handle these roles, the sequential control has been adapted in the ECU system in small and medium size ship engines, which has caused high production cost and complexity of the system. Hence, this paper is focused on developing an distributed ECU system for high speed and high precision control of a marine engine by efficiently combining a CPLD chip and a microprocessor. By sharing load at the MCU with the designed CPLD chip, we could achieve in driving a marine engine with high speed and precise control so that the ECU board has been simplified and its production cost has been reduced.